Procedures Committee,

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 29, 2001

Official Report 286KB pdf

---

Parliamentary Questions

The next agenda item is on parliamentary questions. The documentation is massive, but fortunately most of it is appendices that we have already considered and extracts from the Official Report with words that we have uttered. The substantive draft report on parliamentary questions is before members. We should probably stop at 1 pm so I hope that we can deal with the item by then. Does Frank McAveety want to get away earlier?

I will have to leave as I have an Education, Culture and Sport Committee meeting at 12.30 pm.

I understand.

First, the committee has been asked by Mr McCabe to reconsider a question following the exchange of views at the previous committee meeting. He has written to me and the letter is before members.

On a point of order. Would I be right in thinking that we will consider inspired questions as part and parcel of the business before members? I could not find anything in the folder that relates to them. Will we deal with them or have I missed something?

The issue is dealt with somewhere in the folder.

I do not propose to go through the substantive report paragraph by paragraph, but I propose to consider each recommendation and get the committee to agree or amend the recommendations. We will get through the report quite crisply if we do that.

Before we deal with the report, I want to mention the letter that we have received from Tom McCabe since the previous committee meeting. Again, he has made a plea for a moratorium on questions being lodged during the summer recess. His plea is for a four-week moratorium within the summer recess and not for a moratorium for the whole summer recess. His letter argues that that would help the Executive to deal with the backlog of questions and would improve the service overall. He has also asked for the period within which we allow a longer time for answering questions to be extended by a further week before the summer recess. I think that he has also asked for the deadline to be extended from 28 days to 35 days—no, he has not requested that; it is a possible flexibility that exists somewhere in the back of my mind.

The draft report—which includes extracts from the Official Report of previous discussions—is before members. We are well aware of the issues and have discussed them several times, but the Minister for Parliament has raised them again, so it is appropriate that the committee take a few minutes to go over the ground again to satisfy itself that the provisional decision is correct. If it is not satisfied, the decision could be changed in accord with Mr McCabe's request that we consider a four-week moratorium.

I am still not sold on the idea. I understand the pressure that Mr McCabe is under, but I would like to take a different tack. Unless there is an emergency, members should haud their wheesht a wee bit and give the clerks as much space as they can. I am against the idea that there should be a period in which we cannot ask serious questions. The idea of our not being able to ask questions for a whole month—bearing it in mind that we do not always take our holidays together—and that we should all shut up shop for a month and go home or on holiday—

There is a suggestion that we should have a more clearly worked up and more helpful emergency question system.

The problem lies in defining an emergency question. The definition of an emergency question should be left with the individual who is asking the question rather than someone else. Some members take the opportunity not quite to dream up questions, but to go overboard sometimes if they have a particular area of interest. That is wrong, but it should be left to the individual's discretion to decide whether an answer is needed at a particular time.

I do not agree with a moratorium, but it would be reasonable to consider extending the 28-day deadline to 35 days, for example. We should accept that there is pressure on staff and that, like everyone else, they deserve holidays. In the recess, many of us have more time to meet groups and lobbyists who may have good points that we wish to put forward. It would be wrong to stop us doing that. The flexibility of 35 days might be reasonable. The suggestion in paragraph 15 of annexe A that we should reconsider the issue after the summer recess is sensible.

We recognise that there is a problem and we have made significant concessions. I am not convinced by the Minister for Parliament's case that we need to move from our current position. We will continue to review the issue. We will have three summers' experience of questions; the position in the paper is correct. I do not agree with a moratorium and I am not convinced by the idea regarding the two weeks before the summer recess. That would perhaps be all right, but 35 days certainly would not. That is most of the summer.

I think that we have already agreed to extend the period allowed for answers and the time in the pre-recess period to try to ease the burden. It is realistic for the committee to propose that we run the proposal this summer and see how it goes. Annexe A recommends that we look at the issue again—that is implicit anyway in everything that we have done. Some other ideas have been suggested. The committee has demonstrated a willingness to work with the Executive to ease everybody's work load, but I do not think that Tom McCabe has made an acceptable case. If his proposals were carried out, any questions that I could not ask in the period would be lodged at the end of it. I do not understand how that would help anybody. We can come back to the issue and discuss it in the light of experience. Are members agreed that we record that as our response?

Members indicated agreement.

Annexe B—which is blue—considers the transparency of Executive answers to parliamentary questions.

My paper is green.

Oh dear.

Sorry. That will confuse matters.

I will not mention the colours. Those of us from the west of Scotland know the folly of confusing blues and greens. The colours are utterly irrelevant from the official report's point of view—we should say annexe B. That will be equally bamboozling, but at least the official reporters will be able to track the paper.

Again, we have been asked to discuss the question and take a view on it. We have established that when an executive agency is charged with answering a parliamentary question, the answer should go to the Scottish Parliament information centre and should appear in the written answers report so that it is part of the public record.

However, if a question is not directly about an executive agency but is about, for example, a health board or another body that is at arm's length from ministers, ministers are reluctant to accept responsibility for commissioning an answer or ensuring that the answer is part of the public record. SPICe feels—with some justice—that if a member has asked a question about public policy in a body that is within the broad remit of the Executive, it ought to be possible for the wider community to get the answer, rather than the member simply receiving a letter from, for example, the Scottish Qualifications Authority.

The report suggests that we need to consider the matter more carefully. I do not feel that I understand the distinction that the Executive draws between the executive agencies and the more arm's-length bodies. We need to consider the matter again and perhaps take more evidence.

The issue relates not just to the arm's-length bodies, such as the health boards; it relates also to organisations that have major contracts.

Transport is an issue close to the convener's heart. Quite a number of private organisations deal with transport matters. From time to time, such organisations find themselves in the difficult position of being criticised publicly by elected representatives and not being in a position to present their point of view.

I note that the table on letters sent from a third party at the request of a minister, which is in appendix A to the paper on the transparency of answers, shows that we have had two responses from Halcrow Scotland Ltd. I have had dealings with a different organisation. Such correspondence could and should be available if such an organisation is acting directly on behalf of an executive agency. The information that such an organisation provides—not only organisations such as health boards, but those that act under contract—should in some circumstances also be available to SPICe.

It is a bit awkward. It means that if I wanted to ask a question of Scottish Homes once the Housing (Scotland) Bill had been passed and Scottish Homes had become an executive agency, I would be able to command an answer through a parliamentary question, which would be public information, but if I wanted to ask something about how the SQA was operating, I could not get that information through a parliamentary question because the SQA is not an agency. I would be told in answer to a parliamentary question that the question was a matter for the SQA and that it would respond to me in writing, as Mike Russell was recently told in a substantial number of answers. I would have the information, but the rest of the members and the public would not.

Questions have to be asked about why answering a parliamentary question is appropriate for some bodies and not for others. The paper says that we should discuss the issue and take a view. As paragraph 9 of annexe B to the transparency paper states, there is a case for an issues report

"to look at the implications of this more closely."

The issue has arisen late in the course of the inquiry, rather than having been examined closely earlier on.

If the committee agrees, we will get an issues paper. The matter will not be part of the report that we are discussing today, but it could be part of a further report on the next phase of the parliamentary questions inquiry.

We would note in paragraph 96 of the report that we are discussing today that the committee has taken the decision to consider the issue in the autumn.

Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

That takes us to annexe C, which is the draft report itself. After the prefatory information, the report has a summary of recommendations on pages 5, 6 and 7. The text of the report, which incorporates a summary of the recommendations of the previous report and then goes through the witnesses and the information, starts on page 8.

We will go through each of the recommendations. The first recommendation is in paragraph 28 and is to endorse the recommendations in paragraph 27: to continue to monitor questions; to keep that monitoring under review; and to receive periodic reports. That is all mainstream. I hope that we can agree to it.

Members indicated agreement.

The next recommendation is in paragraph 32: to note the range of information that is available to members and to agree to consider further assessments of members' use of that information after a period of time. That is not controversial and, I hope, is broadly acceptable.

I will just make a luddite remark. Would it be possible to have the Executive's departmental directories on paper as well as electronically?

The difficulty with that is the frequency with which staff turn over, which would require the document to be amended regularly. That is why the Executive felt that it was perfectly possible to make the directories available in an electronic format, because that is readily changed, whereas reprinting at regular intervals is time consuming and costly. Members might forget whether they are working off the 92nd draft or the 93rd draft; there is more scope for confusion with a printed version. Realising that it is best to make the directories available in electronic format is also a tremendous training incentive for members who have not quite mastered the e-mail system.

For practical reasons, the answer to your question has to be no. The electronic system has distinct advantages.

Do we agree the recommendation in paragraph 32?

Members indicated agreement.

That takes us on to the recommendation on seminars on parliamentary questions. The recommendation is basically to note and thank the people who did the work. It is in paragraph 36. Do we agree that?

Members indicated agreement.

The next recommendations are in paragraph 44. The first recommendation is to note concerns about the volume of questions. This paragraph is the most important one because it recommends the extension of the period for answer from 21 days to 28 days during recesses of four days or more and also during the calendar week in advance of such a recess. That is a recommendation for changes and is one of the more substantive parts of the report. We have discussed it before. Do we agree it?

Members indicated agreement.

There are further recommendations in paragraph 49, which is in the section of the draft report that deals with the use of inspired questions. The recommendation is that such questions be "tagged". In paragraph 50, the recommendation is that we agree that there be a delay of a day between the question being lodged and tagged and the answer being given. We have discussed those recommendations previously. Do we agree them?

Members indicated agreement.

There are also recommendations in paragraph 55. We decided not to recommend further changes to or extended time for question time, but to continue to examine question time. In effect, the recommendation is for no change at this point. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

We recommend in paragraph 58 that we undertake no further work on the five options that were listed for further consideration in annexe E to the previous report. We discussed those further and decided not to pursue them. Are we agreed that we are not pursuing them?

Members indicated agreement.

Paragraph 63 deals with the system for recording and tracking the number of holding answers. Do we agree the recommendations in that paragraph?

Members indicated agreement.

Paragraph 70 concludes the section on admissibility of questions. There is no recommendation, merely a statement of the position, which exists for the sake of formal completeness and clarification. Do we agree the section?

Members indicated agreement.

The next section concerns Executive resources: the tracking system and in particular the advisory cost limit. We have established that an advisory cost limit exists and that it has been used but that the Executive is still weighing it up. We will not be in a position to come to a definitive conclusion on the advisory cost limit until the Executive has finished its work.

Paragraph 80 contains the interim conclusion for the section, which is to invite the Executive to discuss its study when it is available. We will consider that in the context of a further round of work. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

We discussed the separate paper on transparency at the beginning and we have agreed that we will consider the matter again. An issues paper will be forthcoming. Do we agree the recommendation in paragraph 86?

Members indicated agreement.

No points arise on the relevance, quality and quantity of parliamentary questions, which is the final section. Paragraph 96, headed "Next Steps", contains our thoughts on those issues and recognises the fact that work is continuing.

I hope that the recommendations that I have highlighted in the text correspond with the summary of recommendations at the beginning and end of the report—they did when I checked them. We have, in effect, agreed the recommendations in the report.

The remaining annexes—A through to I—are the supporting paperwork that will appear with the report. Some of it is correspondence, some of it is statistical information and analysis of parliamentary questions, and much of it is extracts of the Official Report of meetings of the Procedures Committee. Annexe F is the important one, as it requires a change to standing orders. Does the committee agree with that recommendation, which is to give an extra week for answering questions, principally during the summer recess?

Members indicated agreement.

Does the committee agree on the rest of the report?

Members indicated agreement.