Plenary, 04 Mar 2004

Meeting date: Thursday, March 4, 2004

Official Report 638KB pdf

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Points of Order

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I ask you to reconsider your decision not to allow a motion without notice to debate a motion at short notice. The decision is wrong. The Parliament has the time. The motion at short notice is procedurally competent.

The reason that was given for not debating the motion at short notice was that we have not given the Parliament enough notice. The issue is urgent. Today at lunch time, the BBC announced at 12.24 that two hunger strikers had collapsed and are days from death. Before the Parliament next meets, those two men—in fact, the three men who are on hunger strike—could be dead. I do not know under which circumstances we could have given more notice. The Presiding Officer should accept that the issue is urgent.

Ministers could intervene in the situation, so the issue is relevant. We should at least debate whether ministers can do that to prevent a terrible tragedy from taking place. The issue is more important than the procedural niceties of the Parliament. It is a case of human suffering, and the situation is dire and urgent. I urge the Presiding Officer to reconsider his decision.

I am not aware of a decision having been given on the matter, but, for the guidance of members, this is the decision. Under rule 8.2.6, the Presiding Officer's agreement is required to allow Parliament to consider whether to take a motion without notice. In exercising that discretion, I must balance the desirability of having such a debate—on a motion without notice—and the difficulties that would be involved in Parliament being required to debate an issue and vote on it at very short notice indeed.

In the current circumstances, I am not persuaded that the balance is in favour of allowing the motion to proceed, therefore I exercise my discretion by declining the invitation to ask Parliament to accept such a motion.

On a different point of order, Presiding Officer. The decision that is at the discretion of the Presiding Officer should more properly be made by the Parliament. I have had notice that decision time is likely to be brought forward to 4.30 pm.

The urgency of the situation means that the debate requires to be held today. The Parliament should at least have the opportunity to vote on the motion without notice on whether to debate the motion at short notice. It will reflect badly on the office of the Presiding Officer if he does not allow the Parliament to take a view on whether the issue can be debated. Next week might be too late. I ask the Presiding Officer to reflect on his decision, take time, agree to meet me, report back to Parliament later and not make final the decision that he has just made.

I am bound to say that it is unusual for members to criticise a decision by the Presiding Officer—I realise that the member did not go quite that far.

In giving the ruling that I have just given, I was guided by the recognition that we have before us a debate on a motion on which we have not yet proceeded. The question whether decision time might be taken early is, at this stage, hypothetical. In giving members notice that decision time might be taken early, someone was kindly paying them the courtesy of warning them that the timing might be advanced. We are only some 14 minutes ahead of the clock at this stage, and I would have thought it unlikely that decision time would be as early as 4.30 pm, although it might well be. When I ask members to press their request-to-speak buttons shortly, I will get a better impression of the position. As things stand, I have before me a debate on a motion, which I propose to take now.