Members' Bills
The first item of business this morning is consideration of various papers—from Rosemary Byrne, the Health Committee and the Communities Committee—on members' bills, the last of which has just been put before the committee, as it arrived with the clerks after they had sent out the agenda. In her late paper, Rosemary Byrne raises a new point about the support that members who wish to introduce a bill receive from the non-Executive bills unit and so on. I suppose that although the issue impinges on our activities, it is not central to them.
The Health Committee has argued that the cut-off point for introducing members' bills should be earlier. I do not know what colleagues think about that. I should point out that any change will not take effect for three or four years and, at the risk of passing the buck, I think that it might be sensible to leave the matter to the committee in the next Parliament, when there might be different views on the balance between Executive time and the time allocated to members' bills. On the other hand, members might want to make a definite statement on the matter—or perhaps merely make a suggestion—and leave things to the future committee.
As a member of the Health Committee, I took part in the consideration of Rosemary Byrne's member's bill. You might be right to suggest that the matter be flagged up in our legacy paper, but any MSP who has sat on a committee has a general idea of how long it takes a bill—even at its quickest—to pass through the three stages. Some of the problem might be alleviated if members showed a bit of common sense. After all, a bill that is introduced in September will not get through the various stages by the end of March.
If committees are to have enough time to consult, take evidence and consider reports on bills, the cut-off point of the September before dissolution is simply too late. It would be far more sensible for the cut-off to be prior to the summer recess, as that would give committees the usual eight to 12 weeks to issue their call for evidence and carry out consultation. However, this is probably a matter for the future committee, as members and organisations should be asked about, for example, the time allocated to consultation and evidence taking. After all, many people do not feel that enough time is given to those aspects.
Having read through the papers—and having only just scanned the late paper that we received—I have to say that my views on this issue are not as hard and fast as Kate Maclean's. I am a member of the Justice 1 Committee, which tomorrow begins its consideration of Des McNulty's member's bill. I am not sure whether it would have fallen foul of Kate Maclean's suggestion that the cut-off time for introducing members' bills should automatically be pulled forward to before the summer recess.
I am interested to find out how many of the Executive bills that are currently under consideration by various committees were introduced before the summer recess—gey few, I suspect. There seems to be a particular problem with members' bills, and I want to know more about the issue before I reach any conclusion. However, I appreciate that, given where we are at the moment, this will be a matter for the next session.
I am a wee bit concerned about a comment in the first paragraph of Rosemary Byrne's letter:
"My experience with the Drug Treatment Bill has … not been a positive one. I feel that I have been misled by the Parliament. I was set strict guidelines and deadlines for the submission of my Bill which I followed to the letter."
I wonder whether that is strictly true. I note that in your response, convener, you say that the bill
"was introduced on 29 September"—
in other words, at the wrong end of the month. As a result, the timescale seems to have been quite tight.
I also note the comments about the potential contentiousness of the bill in question. Perhaps Des McNulty's member's bill might be somewhat less contentious. However, given that we are under no pressure to take a decision and that we cannot undo what has been done, we could seek some more information on this matter. I need to be convinced of the arguments before I agree to any recommendation.
Kate Maclean said that the matter requires proper scrutiny and consultation before any decision can be reached.
Indeed.
This matter raises quite a few issues. I have a certain amount of sympathy for Rosemary Byrne, who, I assume, met the deadlines that she was given and therefore expected her bill to go through the various stages. Clearly, that has not happened, and we need to clarify the rules in that respect. That said, there is a strong case for having an earlier deadline for introducing member's bills. However, as Bruce McFee pointed out, there is a wider issue, which is the resourcing and treatment of members' bills. The fact that eight members' bills were passed in the first session, whereas in this session a maximum of two are likely to be passed, suggests either that members, having had more experience, are putting in fewer worthwhile proposals or that the system is working to exclude more members' bills.
There is also the issue of the resourcing of NEBU. The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body recommended to the Parliament to instruct NEBU not to give assistance to quite a number of members' bills, all of which were in perfectly good order. All of those issues around members' bills should be considered.
Given that we do not have time to make any changes this session, I would be content with a note in our legacy paper. We could recommend that our successor committee launches an inquiry, hopefully soon into the new session, so that members can be certain that if they propose bills, they will be considered.
On members' bills versus Executive bills, the Schools (Health Promotion and Nutrition) (Scotland) Bill was lodged around the time of the member's bill deadline. That bill is going through, whereas none of the members' bills that were submitted at the deadline are.
It very much depends on the bill and the committee's work programme, so we really have to factor in a little bit of extra time. Rosemary Byrne's bill was lodged towards the end of September, but the Parliament first had to agree which would be the lead committee. The first opportunity the Health Committee had to consider the bill was at the beginning of October. Every piece of proposed legislation has a 12-week call for evidence—we would not want to treat members' bills any differently. For a major piece of legislation, a committee would have at least four evidence sessions and possibly two or three further weeks to consider the stage 1 report before presenting it. Within the timetable that is normally given to legislation, we probably would not even have been able to take the member's bill to a stage 1 debate in Parliament. The Health Committee would have spent quite a few weeks taking evidence. Hard-pushed organisations would have given evidence, essentially for nothing to happen, because the bill would not have reached the end of stage 1, let alone stage 3.
The Health Committee is already considering legislation and a member's bill. Some committees might have time to take a member's bill through at this point in the session, although I doubt that any committee could take a member's bill through to stage 3. I will be surprised if the Justice 1 Committee is able to do that. A lot more time has to be factored in to take account of the position that different committees find themselves in. I find it difficult to sit on a committee and decide not to take a bill through when it is something that I feel strongly about, which is the case with drugs issues. I would have been happy to consider the bill, but the committee did not have time to do it.
We cannot equate members' bills with simple issues, and Rosemary Byrne's bill was not a simple one. The Health Committee had no other option but to decide not to consider it. I sympathise with Rosemary Byrne, who will be upset that her bill cannot go through. Although it is right to mention the matter in the legacy paper and give the next committee the opportunity to review the situation, members have got to be realistic. It does not take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that there will be a lot of Executive legislation at the end of a parliamentary session and that there will be a huge amount of pressure on time, including that of committees.
Members should be realistic about the point at which they should be proposing bills and about the fact that a deadline is a deadline. It is an arbitrary date, but once a member has been here for three or four years, they know about the pressures on the timetable and they should know that they have to lodge bills as quickly as possible if they are to have a real chance of being considered. I am happy to mention reviewing the deadline in the legacy paper, but the issue might be just as much about advice to members.
If we moved the deadline forward, members would complain about that. Also, committees that have a lighter workload than, for example, the Health Committee might be able to complete consideration of a bill in the period between the current deadline and the end of a session. The guidance to members should say, "This is the deadline, but if you lodge your bill at this point in the parliamentary session it is unlikely that there will be enough time for the committee and the Parliament to consider it." The advice from NEBU should tell members that there is a technical deadline but that they should lodge their bills as soon as possible. However, I am happy for the matter to be included in our legacy paper.
The deadline says, "If you submit your bill after this date, you're dead." It does not say, "If you submit your bill before this date, you're guaranteed to get it through." I would have thought that Rosemary Byrne would understand that. I do not accept that she was "misled by the Parliament." It is important that we get as much support as possible for members' bills, but resources are not infinite. If all 100 back benchers—or however many there are—introduced members' bills, the system would collapse, so we cannot guarantee that all such bills will go through the system. On the other hand, we want those members who do introduce bills to get a fair shot.
We should include the matter in our legacy paper and explain the issues that have been raised with us.
You are probably right, convener. Including the matter in our legacy paper is probably the right way to deal with it.
Some members' bills are designed to fail—they are introduced to make a point. Rosemary Byrne's bill is on a serious matter, and I do not believe that it is one of those, but we should bear that in mind.
I believe that the Health Committee has a big workload. In the Justice 1 Committee, we certainly do not have a slack timetable. We meet twice a week—and in the recent past we met three times a week—to try to accommodate what we are being asked to deal with before the end of the session. It is not a question of us simply waiting for somebody to slap us with a member's bill. There is a reasonable prospect that the Parliament will pass Des McNulty's bill before dissolution. The Justice 1 Committee will consider it tomorrow and we will see what happens.
The complexity of members' bills is clearly an issue, but how would we allow for that in setting an earlier deadline? If the deadline was June, Rosemary Byrne's bill would have had a reasonable prospect of becoming law, so I do not want to block off the possibility of an earlier deadline.
Richard Baker said that members should realise that there is a welter of Executive legislation and make appropriate allowances for that, which is true, but there is a huge imbalance in the resourcing of bills. The Executive expects to be able to get through bills that it introduces in September, so perhaps members should have a realistic prospect of that as well. It comes down to resources, which somebody else should consider.
I note that the Communities Committee commented:
"it might be appropriate to introduce a mechanism whereby an assessment of the workload of Committees might be carried before a referral of legislation is made".
We should highlight that important point in our legacy paper.
It has been alleged that bills are sometimes sent to a committee because it has a relatively light workload rather than because the bill is relevant to the committee. We do not want that to happen. The allocation of bills should not be a jigsaw.
Indeed, but the comment was made in the context of changing the standing orders to alter the Communities Committee's remit to allow it to consider the Executive's Schools (Health Promotion and Nutrition) (Scotland) Bill at the same time as three members' bills.
We have given the subject good coverage. Our legacy paper will note some of the relevant points and invite the committee in the next session to consider them.