Motions, Decisions and Parliamentary Time
The next item of business is a debate on first, motion S2M-4870, in the name of Donald Gorrie, on behalf of the Procedures Committee, on its fourth report in 2006, on motions and decisions and secondly, on the committee's fifth report in 2006, which is a consultation report on parliamentary time.
I have two tasks. One is to move a motion to alter the standing orders on some relatively minor issues and the other is to introduce the debate on the wider issue of the use of parliamentary time.
I will deal rapidly with the report on motions and decisions. The Procedures Committee has agreed that we should recommend to Parliament that certain ways of doing things that have been followed by custom hitherto should now be enshrined in the standing orders in case any future management of the Parliament should be naughty and not stick to sensible customs.
We have indicated that the Presiding Officer should have the power to decide what motions and amendments are admissible. Where there are a number of amendments, he should also be able to decide which amendment pre-empts another amendment. That happens regularly at the moment, but we want to provide for it in the standing orders.
We also say that, after six weeks, the Parliamentary Bureau may remove a member's motion from the list if it is not up for debate and has received no more support. The bureau may remove such motions, but it does not have to. We thought that it was reasonable to allow the bureau to remove motions, rather than having the list cluttered up with lots of old amendments. We have affirmed the right of the mover of an amendment or motion to withdraw it and we have clarified what we mean by decisions being taken by a majority. I need not bore members with it, as the definition got very technical, but our proposal is sensible. Those are the changes to the standing orders.
The bigger picture is the use of parliamentary time. In the previous session, under the able leadership of Murray Tosh, the Deputy Presiding Officer, the Procedures Committee struggled with improving our procedures and left a large set of recommendations. In this session, the committee, first under Iain Smith and then under me, has gone into that thoroughly. We have consulted both in person and in other ways, for example by having round-table discussions and writing to members.
We have concentrated on certain points on which there seems to be sufficient support to make it worth while to consider possible changes. However, anyone today is welcome to raise any issue that is in any way relevant. We will certainly take on board and consider any suggestions.
I am delighted to accept Donald Gorrie's invitation to raise an issue that has concerned me since the beginning of the Parliament. Amendments to motions, particularly for debate in the chamber, strike me as not being proper amendments. We end up debating a series of different motions; rarely are they proper amendments. Has the committee ever considered whether amendments that are basically new motions should be accepted for debate and whether only genuine amendments should be allowed?
That is a good point. We may have discussed it a bit, but we have not concentrated on it. The feeling has been that a number of relevant issues are political rather than procedural decisions and that it is up to the parties to sort them out. However, Brian Adam makes a sensible point, which I will ensure the committee examines at its next meeting.
In our consultation, we could find no appetite for major changes to the parliamentary week. Various suggestions were put forward, but none gained great support. I hope that if we were wrong and there is great support for a certain change, members will either write to us or say so this afternoon. We have concentrated on better use of our time.
The most obvious dissatisfaction with the present system is the treatment of stage 3—both the debate and the lead-up to it. In our report, we have made a number of propositions. First, we have proposed requiring amendments to be lodged further in advance of stage 3 in order to give a longer time for their consideration. That would have the advantage, among other things, of allowing a better estimate of how long a stage 3 debate would take. It would perhaps also allow more time for discussion of and negotiation on the wording of an amendment in the period between its lodging and the debate.
I have discussed last-minute amendments—whether we call them manuscript amendments or whatever—with the Presiding Officer. He thinks that we can set out rules governing them, and he discourages them as much as he can. We can perhaps strengthen the rules on late amendments.
Through pressure from the Procedures Committee and others, we have made some progress in giving longer time for important stage 3 debates, but we still have further to go. We have suggested that having a full day for debating important bills to which significant amendments have been lodged should be the norm, although a debate could go into a second day if that was necessary.
We have drawn attention to an existing rule that is not currently used. At stage 3, the debate on the amendments and the debate on the motion can be held on separate occasions. For example, a whole day could be set aside for debating stage 3 amendments and an hour and a half could be set aside for the debate on the motion. That would give members another opportunity to consider whether they have got all the amendments right.
The fear that we will be lampooned in the press as being idle and incompetent if business ends early has discouraged the setting aside of adequate time for stage 3 debates. There is a fear that the press could say that we cannot even use the time that we have for debates. However, that is a mistaken fear. It is much better to have a system in which debates sometimes end an hour early than to have a system in which debates that should last two or three hours longer do not because not enough time has been allocated for them. We must have enough time for debates; overestimating the time that we need for them is no big deal.
Most of the committee's efforts were concentrated on issues relating to stage 3, but we have made other useful little proposals that will strengthen the position of members and how we work. We have suggested that when stage 2 consideration of a bill has finished, the convener of the relevant committee should be given perhaps 15 minutes in the chamber to talk about the state of play on the bill. They could discuss the amendments that have been agreed to, the amendments that have not been agreed to and the major issues that are still being considered, so that members who are not members of the committee that is dealing with the bill can get a steer on things and find out whether the subject is of great interest to them. They might then take more interest in the bill. Currently, we fail to get non-members of committees that are dealing with bills to take enough interest in stage 3 debates—I am as guilty as everyone else in that respect. We all work so hard in our own committees and on our own subjects that we do not pay enough attention to bills that are being considered elsewhere.
Will the member take an intervention?
I have gone past the time that I have been allotted.
I will allow an intervention, as there can be a little flexibility in the debate.
Did the Procedures Committee consider suggesting a change to the standing orders? Would a change to the standing orders be required to allow what has been suggested to happen? How can we implement such a change? I have supported all along the suggestion that has been made, which is very good, but it might be lost after this debate.
To which particular change is the member referring?
I was referring to the change that the member has just mentioned—having a report to the chamber after stage 2.
I think that the suggested change could happen without the standing orders being changed, but we have suggested that the procedure should be a custom and should be offered to committee conveners as an opportunity.
We have suggested that ministerial statements should be made available to all members perhaps half an hour before they are given so that all members can read them and then ask slightly more intelligent questions than they can currently ask. We have to ask questions just after such statements have been read to us. Occasionally, questions on statements have been separate from debates on them, which could perhaps take place later or the next day. Such an approach would provide an opportunity for more intelligent questioning and debating.
We have suggested that there should be a longer timescale for lodging motions and amendments for ordinary Executive or Opposition debates—I am not talking about debates on bills. A motion could be lodged on the Tuesday of the previous week and amendments could be lodged on the Thursday. Members would then have some idea of what they were going to debate. For example, I did not know until this morning the wording of an amendment in support of which I was meant to make an impassioned speech. We need a longer timescale for ordinary debates. That could be achieved without a change to standing orders, and we should give the bureau a serious push in that direction.
We also suggest that we could be more flexible about members' business debates. Especially at times when more parliamentary time is available, such as soon after an election, one or more members' business debates could be inserted into the ordinary morning or afternoon sessions.
Finally, we suggest something that will enlarge members' vocabulary: interpellations. These are a continental European invention that works in many European Parliaments. They are a vehicle through which back benchers can raise an issue in a question-and-answer format with the minister over a longer period than is allowed for questions at the moment. Other members can also join the debate on the back of that and, if the matter is considered important enough, the member can lodge a motion to be debated—again, in ordinary parliamentary time—and voted on. That is very different from what happens in our system. We have members' business debates in which all that happens is that the minister replies nicely to the member who has lodged the motion, pats them on the head and tells them to go away. If we had the power to force an issue to a vote, that would concentrate ministers' minds considerably.
Mr Gorrie, you threw me off guard by saying "finally" some time ago.
I am sorry. I was concentrating on getting the description of interpellations correct.
I hope that members will have some radical ideas. We have put forward some quite modest ideas that have received a lot of support within the committee. We look forward to hearing other members' views today and also encourage members to write to us with their views.
I move,
That the Parliament notes the Procedures Committee's 4th Report 2006, (Session 2), Motions and decisions (SP Paper 589) and agrees that the changes to Standing Orders set out in Annexe A to the report be made with effect from 6 October 2006.
I thank the Lord Advocate for getting us out of any time problems that we might have had this afternoon. The Scottish National Party has no problem with the changes to standing orders that are proposed in the Procedures Committee's fourth report of 2006. For the rest of my speech, I will speak very much for myself in anything that I say about the suggestions in the committee's fifth report of 2006. I put out a call for SNP members who were interested in the subject to come along to the debate—members can see the results all around me.
It is proposed that stage 3 amendments should be lodged earlier in order to allow the Parliamentary Bureau to schedule more accurately the time that is to be allowed for debate. It is also proposed that the bureau should generally allow more time for stage 3 debates. I suspect that an earlier cut-off time for the lodging of amendments would be helpful, provided that the same amount of time elapsed between the end of stage 2 and the end time for lodging stage 3 amendments. I cannot see how that would give the Government any problems, as it would be assured of an end time for its bills. The only occasion on which it might cause a problem would be at the very end of a four-year session. However, skilful timetabling would get the Government out of that one.
An earlier deadline for lodging amendments would allow more time for briefing and consultation on them. Often, stage 3 amendments have not been consulted on and the various interest groups outside the Parliament have not had time to think through what can sometimes be quite complex and far-reaching amendments. Anything that would give us more time to consider stage 3 amendments before we voted on them would be good and would also allow time for better scheduling by the bureau so that we would not get into a situation in which amendments are not debated or in which members who want to participate in the debate on the amendments are not allowed to have their say. Although, to be fair, I recognise that it does not happen frequently at stage 3, we must not get into a situation in which debate is effectively stifled in an important stage 3 discussion. The 30 minutes' extension that is currently allowed under the standing orders is not satisfactory. The time by which the deadlines may be extended needs to be longer. We also need to allow ourselves more scope to have better timetabling.
I am not attracted in general to the proposal that we should schedule more stage 3 debates on a separate day from the stage 3 consideration of amendments. The minus side is that many members might see the debate on the motion to pass the bill as totally inconsequential and, quite frankly, I believe that if we make it a separate item of business, it will receive a fairly poor turnout.
Such an approach is not even necessary if amendments need to be corrected. If the member in charge, who is usually the minister, realises that something has gone badly wrong during the stage 3 consideration of amendments, he can, under standing orders, propose a motion without notice to put the process on hold and have the debate on the motion to pass the bill later. In any case, I think that the matter should be left to the bureau. At the moment, if it thinks that the stage 3 consideration of amendments will go on so long that it is not sensible to have the stage 3 debate on the same day, it can move the debate to another day.
Having the convener to the committee that considered a bill at stage 2 make a report to Parliament after that stage has ended is a good idea. It might certainly attract to the stage 3 debate more members who know what is happening. However, I do not believe that we need an oral statement on the matter. I might be wrong, but I cannot help but wonder whether such a statement would be an exciting parliamentary occasion. Instead, we could have a written statement setting out details of the debates that were had and the decisions that were taken at stage 2 that anyone who was interested could pick up from the document supply centre.
On the suggestion that the embargoed text of a statement should be made available to all members 30 or so minutes before the statement is made to Parliament, I do not know whether that will put impossible pressure on the Minister for Parliamentary Business. After all, at the moment, front-bench spokesmen—never mind all members—can have problems getting statements 30 minutes before they are made. Such a move would make leaks almost endemic and would indeed make it impossible to trace the person responsible. I acknowledge that front benchers need to know a bit more about the substance of a statement because they have the opportunity to ask longer and more detailed questions. However, it is surely not beyond the wit of any parliamentarian worth his or her salt to ask a short, simple question after a statement to elicit a short, simple response. Perhaps it is because we all think that we need to ask questions that are not short or simple that we think that we need to get the statement earlier.
I am not really sure whether debates on statements should be the norm. After all, the Government and the Opposition have their own time that can be used if either feels it important to have a debate on a particular issue. I know that all members tend to wonder why a debate on a subject could not have been longer, but the truth is that all of us have the ability to schedule time for such debates. Indeed, the proposed interpellation procedure could fill that particular gap without having to introduce longer statements.
On other recommendations that have been made, I think that one of the risks of bringing forward the time for lodging motions and amendments is that they might lose some immediacy. For example, Opposition parties might want to lodge a motion of immediate importance instead of having to lodge something that they had had to think about 10 days earlier.
On the suggestion that members' business be held at optional times to prevent poor attendances, experience suggests that the attendance at different events will not change simply by changing the time. We should let the current situation well alone.
Finally, without having had the benefit of seeing how the interpellation procedure has worked in the other countries that the Procedures Committee has visited—in that respect I have made a mental note to apply to that committee in future—I find it difficult to understand how the procedure will work here. However, it has some attractions and I certainly think that we should give it an experimental go.
I call Alex Johnstone.
I request the Presiding Officer's indulgence to speak from a sitting position.
Absolutely. I understand the circumstances.
Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I should explain to other members that I mean no discourtesy. In the past half-hour, I have aggravated a back problem and, as a result, I will remain seated.
The Procedures Committee has produced the two reports that the Parliament is considering today. I will touch briefly on the report on motions and decisions. It was the view of all committee members that we were simply putting down in standing orders what had become the normal practice of the Parliament, and we wanted to ensure that that was properly understood and included in the standing orders. If any member has a differing view, I would be delighted to hear about that, but I suspect that there is little in the report that is controversial.
Neither, I suppose, is there much that is controversial in the other report that we are debating today—the consultation report on parliamentary time. The idea of publishing a consultation report is primarily to encourage as many people in the Parliament as possible to give us their views on issues to do with parliamentary time, because one of the greatest challenges that the committee faced was to ensure that anyone who might have had an opinion brought it forward so that we could include it for consideration.
There may be some members who take the view that our report is not particularly daring in its presentation of possible alternatives. Had we decided to publish the report two or four weeks earlier, it would have seemed like a much bigger body of work and some of its suggestions might have seemed more radical. However, some of the more radical suggestions fell by the wayside because we realised that there was no support for such changes. Suggestions for open-ended parliamentary sittings, for regular sittings on more days in the week, and for not having a specified decision time, so that we could debate into the night on the good old-fashioned Westminster model, were all discussed and all passed from our discussions without our feeling the need to include them in our report. The truth is that the appetite for change in that area does not exist and, unless somebody speaks during the debate to encourage us to think differently, that is likely to continue to be the case.
However, there were one or two areas in which we felt that it was essential for us to make suggestions for change and to attempt to get the views of more members—particularly on the way in which stage 3 consideration has been conducted. Stage 3, if it is properly organised and if it runs to the timetabling motion, can run smoothly, leaving us all with the impression that everything has worked well, but there have, on occasion, been significant difficulties.
There are those who are opposed to the notion of timetabling motions entirely. Having been a member of the Parliamentary Bureau for two years, I realise that there is no malice involved in parliamentary timetabling motions for stage 3. Stage 3 consideration must be timetabled to ensure that we can stick to the proper parliamentary schedule. However, when that timetabling appears to be inappropriate—and we often discover that only at the last minute—it can seem as if someone is trying to stifle debate. It has never been my experience that any business manager has tried to stifle debate on any subject, but it can be embarrassing when important motions and amendments are discussed only by a handful of members when many want to speak or, even worse, not discussed at all before a vote.
For that reason, the one area in which flexibility is essential is in allowing time to ensure that amendments are properly discussed at stage 3. We have come close to making poor law at stage 3 of some bills before now, and we now have the opportunity to make changes so that that does not happen in future.
I entirely agree that we should have a mechanism that enables us to hear all amendments being debated at stage 3. Many of us have been present when that has not been possible. Could Mr Johnstone tell us exactly which proposal in the report he supported that would have allowed that to happen? For example, did he support increasing the time by which timetabling deadlines can be extended from 30 minutes to 60 minutes? It would be useful to hear about that, because once we are involved in stage 3 of a bill, there is no prospect of rescheduling the debate into the next day.
The idea of the Presiding Officer having the power to extend for up to 60 minutes, rather than the 30-minute leeway that exists at present, may serve the function of allowing that extra time. The flexibility that the Presiding Officer can use has been effective in some cases. That may be the solution to the problem.
"Interpellation" is an appalling word, which could have been designed by a European committee. However, when we took the trouble to look at activities in other European Parliaments, we were surprised to discover that a system that is often described as interpellation existed in most if not all of the parliaments that we observed. It is for that reason that we suggested trialling the procedure.
The most similar procedure to interpellation that we have in the Scottish Parliament is the option that the Presiding Officers have at question time to allow a number of supplementaries to the original question. The interpellation procedure reflects that type of activity. Members could apply for an interpellation to be timetabled and during the time that is allocated for that they and other members could explore an issue in greater detail with a minister.
It would be valuable for us to trial the procedure in order to fine-tune it for our circumstances. I urge members—especially those who are not members of the Procedures Committee—to take the opportunity of the debate to make known their views on the issue.
As a member of the Procedures Committee past conveners club, I am pleased to participate in the debate.
First, I will address a couple of issues that relate to the proposals for changes to the standing orders. By and large, the proposals on motions and decisions are sensible and should be welcomed. I disagree slightly with one issue, which is that of questions that are subject to an absolute majority. If a question on a motion is subject to absolute majority, I suggest that the vote should always be recorded. In particular, I note the proposed change to standing order 3.5.2, which relates to the removal from office of the Presiding Officer or Deputy Presiding Officer. Surely we should record the vote on such a question, irrespective of whether all members agree. Obviously, it is unlikely that such a vote would ever happen but, if it were to be held, the chamber should be required to vote on the question and not simply to pass it because no one says no.
It is important that we get the proposals on pre-emption right. We sometimes say that one amendment pre-empts another when, in fact, the amendments are alternatives and they may all be acceptable. Let us say that I am allergic to nuts and have to vote on the motion "I prefer pistachio ice cream". Two amendments may have been lodged: "I prefer strawberry ice cream" and "I prefer chocolate ice cream". Because I am allergic to nuts, I would be happy to vote for either of the two amendments, although my preference would be to vote for chocolate. I might want to vote for the amendment "I prefer strawberry ice cream" in order to get pistachio off the agenda, but if it is agreed to—[Interruption.]
I have lost the pistachio thread.
Order.
Ultimately, I would want to go for the amendment "I prefer chocolate ice cream" because chocolate is my preferred flavour. Amendments to a motion are sometimes listed as pre-emptions when, in fact, they are alternatives. We should be careful when we consider the issue, although it may be more for the Presiding Officers than for the Procedures Committee.
The debate on the parliamentary timetable commenced when I was the convener of the Procedures Committee. The committee agreed to hold the inquiry and drew up a remit. However, the inquiry took place after I was shunted sideways to another committee and I am slightly disappointed that the committee did not take a more radical look at the parliamentary timetable. I agree with some of the proposals and options that are contained in the report, but there are others about which I am less certain. The parliamentary timetable raises certain issues, in terms of not only the parliamentary week but the parliamentary year and the four-year session. The work is balanced across the parliamentary timetable, but not in a logical way.
In the first few months of a parliamentary session, it is inevitable that there is very little legislation for members to consider. It takes time for bills to come forward, to go through their initial committee consideration at stage 1 and so on.
In the last five months of this session, after we return from the October recess, we will deal with 16 Executive bills—eight will be at stage 1 and eight will be at stage 2 or heading into stage 3. We will also have 12 members' bills, only one of which has gone beyond stage 1 and eight of which were lodged in the past week or so before the 30 September deadline. In a four-year session, I wonder why it takes members so long to lodge their members' bills. Three private bills are also still being considered.
Even if the members' bills do not go beyond stage 1, 40 parliamentary slots will be required to deal with all the stages of the bills, and only 66 slots are left in the timetable. That has resulted in our having to create an extra slot when we return from the recess, on Wednesday 25 October with a 9 o'clock start—I will not raise again the question whether it is appropriate for a debate on the early years to be the first debate to start at 9 o'clock.
We have worked hard to address that issue. I will respond to that point later.
I know that ministers have tried to address the issue and I am grateful for the efforts that are being made to solve it.
It is inevitable that we need to consider the balance. In the first few months of a session, or even in the first part of a parliamentary year—legislation tends to pile up towards the end of a year—perhaps committees need more time to meet and the chamber needs a little less time, given that we have what are often thought of as pointless debates. In later parts of the parliamentary year and session, we can allow the Parliament more time to meet, so that it can give more time to stage 3 debates. That might be possible in the next few months.
We need to consider the legislative burden overall. We are here to legislate, but perhaps we legislate too much. Whichever parties form the next Executive—I am sure that the Liberal Democrats will bid to be part of that and to lead the next Administration—they will need to consider the legislative burden on the Parliament.
One task that the Parliament is meant to undertake is holding people to account and scrutinising them. The committees have a role in that, but the legislative burden often means that they cannot do all that they should do. For example, the Parliament has conducted little post-legislative scrutiny and we need to do more of it. We need to examine whether the legislation that we have passed is effective. Committees need more time to conduct inquiries of their own choosing and to hold ministers to account at regular sessions. It is sad to say that Westminster does that better than us—committees there call ministers to give a state of the nation address on their departments and hold them to account with questions.
Business motions need to be re-examined, because notice of business in the Parliament is not as good as it could be. We should have a firm business programme for at least two weeks and perhaps indicative business for a week or two weeks after that. That applies to Opposition parties, too. It is a disgrace that we do not know when we leave at the end of a week the Opposition business for debate on the next Thursday. Opposition parties need to play that game. Motions should be in the Business Bulletin by the Friday in the week before they are to be debated and amendments to those motions should be in the Business Bulletin at least a full day before the debate, to allow time for the public as well as members to know what the Parliament will debate.
I am a not infrequent speaker in the chamber, but this is the first time that I have spoken in a procedures debate. I was prompted to do so because I thought that the Procedures Committee produced an excellent report on the use of parliamentary time. I will make one contribution to the committee's final deliberations, which lie ahead.
I start with a brief backwards glance. Members will know that next week marks the sixth anniversary of Donald Dewar's death. We will recall with affection that this is the sort of arcane procedural debate that he would have positively relished. He would have had a bracing joust with veteran parliamentarians such as Donald Gorrie and Margo MacDonald, who have been members of the Parliament and the House of Commons. I want to hold on to that thought, because the question is whether we have produced a set of procedures that works to help to modernise Scottish democracy.
The challenge was to create a modern, accessible and above all effective Parliament. Members will recall the sceptics who said that we could never make a unicameral Parliament work in a country with a millennium-long history of bicameral Parliaments and those who said that powerful committees stewarding stage 2 could never provide the rigour of a full parliamentary chamber debate. There was also the fear that the legislative boundary between Westminster and Holyrood would prove to be so fuzzy and opaque that effective lawmaking would be all but paralysed. Of course, each of those propositions has been proved to be untrue—straw men from cynics who are best forgotten.
I am not a straw man, although I confess to having had some concerns that the checks and balances in a unicameral Parliament would have been adversely affected in comparison with what Westminster has. I am partially won over, but we should not pat ourselves on the back too much because the only thing that we have got completely right is the accessibility. We can claim that the Parliament is genuinely accessible, but is it as effective as it might be?
I take Margo MacDonald's point, and I record the fact that I do not think that she could ever be described as a straw woman either.
Today's Procedures Committee has given us a report with a sophistication that is reminiscent of that of the constitutional steering group. We have before us nine proposals, all of which have merit and which, almost without exception, would strengthen the hand of the legislature vis-à-vis the Executive. That should be welcomed and it moves in the direction that Margo MacDonald hinted at. That is greatly to the committee's credit. The proposals would strengthen the hand of the chamber and improve the quality of legislation.
Of course, there is always a but. Would we also be improving the quality of deliberation in the chamber? Of the nine proposals that are before us, none would decrease parliamentary time and five suggest that we should spend more time in the chamber. Implicit in the report is a debate about whether the only way in which we can improve the quality of legislation is by expanding the time that is available in the chamber for deliberation. The committee must readdress that in its subsequent deliberations.
If members look around, they will see that almost one in 10 of the parliamentary membership is present. Yesterday, I sat here during the Environment and Rural Development Committee's debate for which fewer than 20 members were present, even for the opening speeches. That does not reflect well on us collectively.
If we are to address the quality of deliberation, we do not want to get into a sterile argument between the Executive and the Opposition parties with each defending its existing territory. My point is that we need to reconsider the committee debates. They should be better attended, but the truth is that members are voting with their feet. We devote to committee debates double the time that we offer to the Scottish National Party, three times the time that we offer to the Conservatives, and six times the time that we offer to the Greens. Committee debates in the chamber are the least dramatic of parliamentary occasions; often they are held months after the original work in the committee and they do not work in the chamber.
We spend our time urging every other public sector body in Scotland to improve its efficiency; perish the thought that we should exempt ourselves. Perhaps we need to think about how we make our time in the chamber of the highest quality. We should take committee business back to the committees so that they can shine with all the attention that they deserve on the day of report publication and not leave us with the hangover of some dog-day debate in an empty chamber months later. If we do that, we will better serve Scotland's democracy and raise the quality of legislation, the issue that is addressed by the report and the quality of deliberation in the chamber.
I thank Wendy Alexander for a thoughtful speech. For me, this is not a party-political issue. Many of us have been here for seven years and I still have concerns about several things that happen in the chamber, not just about the quality of legislation, although I will come to that, but about accountability to and robustness for members.
The committee's report is excellent. I am interested in more radical issues that could have been brought out, but perhaps we will discuss those another time.
I will take it a stage at a time, starting with stage 2 amendments. We all know that substantial amendments can be lodged at stage 2 on which the committee cannot take evidence. That is a huge concern. If the amendments are then incorporated in the bill—
Will the member take an intervention?
I am sorry; my point about stage 2 should have been that although we accept written submissions, we cannot accept oral evidence from witnesses at that stage.
My understanding is that the committee can take evidence on whatever it wants at whatever point it likes. There have been occasions on which a committee has had to go back and take evidence if a substantial new issue has arisen. If that measure has not been as widely used as it could have been, we could reflect that to the Conveners Group.
I stand corrected, but my point is that I have never seen a committee stopped in its tracks to take evidence on a substantial stage 2 amendment. That has not happened in committees that I have sat on, so I would say that the measure has not been used.
An even worse example can happen at stage 3 when there is no opportunity in our constricted timetable to take evidence when substantial amendments are debated. The huge issue for this place is that that means the end of the matter. We are unicameral, the end chamber; that is it—we are left with the legislation. In the context of Iain Smith's points with which I agreed, we have not even had an opportunity for post-legislative scrutiny. Chickens might come home to roost in due course as a result. We must consider the question of the Parliament's status.
I accept that it would not work to leave the debate to pass the motion at the end of stage 3 procedure until another date when the heat has gone out of the matter. However, there is no doubt that the curtailed debates at the end of the stage 3 procedure are just a gesture. Points that are made by members during the debate, responses from ministers and the final vote might form the basis of judicial decisions on interpretation of the law. The act contains just the words on the page, so judges and sheriffs will look to the stage 3 debate for ministerial responses, the purpose behind them and the vote that was cast and say, "That was the edge that was put on the debate; that was the subtlety that made the bill go through." We have to take care at that stage.
My opinion digresses from Alasdair Morgan's on the matter of ministerial statements, which can be a farce. Last week, the report on the right to buy was published and we had the minister's statement. I know that the minister was prepared at first to release the report earlier in the day, but established protocols meant that the report and statement were available only in the chamber. It is pretty ridiculous for those of us whose speeches followed the statement to try to ask substantive questions of the minister—questions, not tripwires—when we had just received the report and the statement. I would like that practice to be addressed.
The solution might be in the strange procedure of interpellation; I knew nothing about that procedure until today when I read about it in an annex to the report. Running a trial of the procedure is an interesting proposal. I will tie that in with what I believe is the failure of question time. We have tried question time in all kinds of ways. I remember the early days when it was vibrant and interesting. Perhaps things cannot continue like that, but the question times on specific subjects still do not work. No matter who is in power next year, we need to get to grips with substantial issues and follow them through.
The Presiding Officer and the Deputy Presiding Officers have been very good—
I will just finish my point. They have been good at allowing supplementaries, but sometimes we are just beginning to get somewhere—
One minute.
I am prepared to take Iain Smith's intervention.
You may take the intervention if you can work it into your remaining minute.
Does the member agree that we need to consider whether committees could do more to question ministers and hold them to account, perhaps by holding regular accountability sessions?
I could not agree more with Iain Smith. I will keep within my time, Presiding Officer.
An issue that is not covered in the Procedures Committee's report is the imbalance between legislation—far too many sausages go into the legislative sausage machine—and the ability of committees to conduct inquiries, including short inquiries on issues such as the delivery of free personal care, in which committees have time to hear from ministers on issues. There is hardly a member who is not aware that we do not have the time that we used to have to conduct inquiries. During my time as a member of the Communities Committee we have conducted only one short inquiry. The imbalance is frustrating for members and does not keep committees fresh.
I put those thoughts to members—other ideas might come up. I welcome the debate. It is not an anorak debate; it is important to the vibrancy of the Parliament.
I join other members in welcoming the work of the Procedures Committee, but I express more than a degree of frustration that the committee's report contains many issues that have been raised and discussed in the past and on which it is taking too long to make improvements.
I was sad enough to reread the report by the Procedures Committee in the first session of the Parliament into the founding principles of the Scottish Parliament—I will be honest and admit that I reread not the entire report, but its 135 recommendations. The report that we consider today contains strong echoes of that earlier report in its recommendations on parliamentary time. To be fair, some work was taken forward, but a great deal was not, not least because the report was published just before an election, after which a successor committee was established with a new convener. There is a danger that the same thing might happen in this session of the Parliament, so I exhort members who have it in their gift to get on with making practical improvements—and those who will be able to make such improvements in the next session—to do so. For example, we have often considered proposals on stage 3. Indeed, proposals for changes to matters such as members' business debates and advance notice of parliamentary business have been made a number of times.
During the first session of the Parliament, I ventured into the terrain of consideration of the overall amount of available parliamentary time, when the then Procedures Committee conducted an inquiry into the matter. Perhaps I should not repeat this theory, which a national newspaper dubbed, "the law of the handbags", but it is my experience that no matter how big the handbag, there are always 10 per cent more contents to go in it than there is space for them to fit into. A similar law applies to time in many different ways, including in the Parliament. There is a danger that we constantly consider how to add on time to address issues rather than think how we might make better use of the time that we have.
When we discuss extending meetings of the Parliament, we often hear members say, "Oh, but we said we'd be family friendly and have votes at 5 pm." A rigidity that was never intended is built into such thinking. It is problematic that the concept of a family-friendly Parliament has become equated with having decision time at 5 pm. All members know that ours is not a 9-to-5 job, so it is unfortunate that people got the message that we do a 9-to-5 job because we vote at 5 pm.
Most members who have responsibilities to care for children or others, or a multitude of other demands on their time, would be willing to be flexible about when the Parliament meets if we thought that we would be making the best use of our time while we are here and—this is crucial—if we had the opportunity to plan in advance. During the past couple of days, members have commented on the forthcoming Education Committee debate on the early years. The lack of notice of changes to the shape of the parliamentary week is an issue for people who must organise their lives pretty tightly.
I make a general point, on which I strongly agree with Wendy Alexander—I disagree with her on another point, which I will come to. We must consider the quality of what we do and how our work can be rewarding and fulfilling for members and for people outside the Parliament. I note in passing that a consequence of topics for debate not being available in advance is that people outside the Parliament cannot effectively engage in the debate by issuing briefing notes, lobbying members or inputting information that would make the debate altogether better informed and more worth while for us all.
Although the overall quality of debate could and should be improved, I caution against the adoption of a blanket approach to increasing or decreasing a particular type of business—that is where I part company with Wendy Alexander. There are good and heavily subscribed committee debates and there are less good and less well-subscribed committee debates, just as there are good and heavily subscribed Executive debates and less good and less well-subscribed Executive debates. What is important is that we introduce sufficient flexibility into the way in which the Parliament is run to enable a proper amount of time to be allocated where it is most needed.
I realise that there are issues to do with how much power we put in the hands of Presiding Officers and bodies such as the Parliamentary Bureau that handle the arrangements that we have in place for planning parliamentary business. I again refer members to some of the comments, recommendations and evidence that appeared in the report by the Procedures Committee's predecessor committee in the first session. I am not being obsequious just because Murray Tosh, who was the convener of that committee, is in the Presiding Officer's chair. Although the world has moved on in some respects, that report contains useful consideration of how flexibility can be introduced so that people are here because they want to be here and are informed and engaged when they are here.
I will finish with some comments that are in a similar vein to those of Iain Smith and Margo MacDonald's intervention on Wendy Alexander. Lest we get too complacent about how effectively our procedures are working, there are some wider, more radical and more difficult issues that we must consider. I will deal first with one of the easier issues—post-legislative scrutiny—on which I agree entirely with Iain Smith. As has been said, there are good examples of cases in which post-legislative scrutiny has been conducted in the Parliament's second session, but there are not nearly enough of them. That is because such work is not embedded in the Parliament's practice to the extent that people seem to agree it ought to be.
The second issue, which is slightly jaggier, is one that the first session's Procedures Committee dipped its toe into. It relates to party management and party control. If we want to achieve spontaneity in debates and to allow members to engage, interact and intervene, we must strike a balance—I stress that word—between effective party management, which is an appropriate and necessary part of the operation of the Parliament, and the provision of opportunities for individuals to engage with the debate that is taking place. It will not always be necessary or appropriate to provide such opportunities, but there are many times when that cannot readily happen at the moment.
For all those reasons, I welcome today's debate and the report that is before us. Procedures matter. We joke about being anoraks when we take part in Procedures Committee debates, but procedures have great relevance to our effectiveness as an institution. It would be sad, if not a tragedy, if an institution that is barely eight years old did not have the capacity to reflect openly and honestly on how it could improve its procedures in the future and on how it could work better, and be seen to work better, both for its members and—crucially—for the people whom they represent.
I thank Donald Gorrie and congratulate his committee on both its reports, which are good reports.
I will pick up where Susan Deacon left off—she asked how we can be spontaneous and flexible. In many respects, better party management is the answer; if we know what the Opposition business is and have enough time to plan ahead, we can decide to be more flexible about what shape the debate will take, who will take part in it and how long it will be.
I am sometimes laughingly referred to as a party manager. I am not, of course, but I sit at the feet of the party managers. I do not blame them; I blame the shadowy people behind the scenes, although we do not have any such people in our grouping—we are all up front. Parliament should take on board the paradox that more flexibility and spontaneity might arise from better management of the business of the Opposition parties. By and large, the Government has to organise its business well in advance—Opposition parties might do the same.
Wendy Alexander talked about the quality of debate influencing the quality of legislation. I suggest that we should do less, better. That is not an original thought, but I do not know why it was jettisoned along with many of the other promises that were made. One reason why our debates are less than satisfactory to a great number of us on the back benches is that we are so constrained by time. We need time to think, but we do not give ourselves that time. If we are honest with ourselves we will accept that we deliver speeches and afterwards, when we read them in the Official Report—if we have the nerve—we wish that we had had more time to think about them, because we would have said this, that and the next thing. I have no doubt that the quality of debate could achieve a tremendous peak of excellence, given how clever we all are.
There is an element missing from this debate: it is the people outside Parliament, who are supposedly represented by the whisky-bottle shapes on the chamber walls. More than anything, we should worry about how we are perceived outside, rather than how we are perceived among ourselves. I am concerned about that and—from looking at the press gallery—I see that our words of wisdom will go unreported yet again. None of the mea culpas that we produce are acknowledged, so they are not relayed to the people who elect us—or who may not come out to elect us to Parliament next time round. As well as examining the parliamentarians' procedures, perhaps the Procedures Committee might seek a rapprochement with the gentlemen of the press. Now that everybody drinks together in the White Heather Club bar, I do not see why we should not discuss how we should fulfil our functions in our democracy, because I do not think that the press are fulfilling theirs properly. That is me out of the papers for the next six months.
In my defence, I will refer to a committee meeting that took place this week. It was an important meeting because the Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Bill was discussed at it. The bill is not the main thrust of Parliament's business, but it is important and people outside Parliament are interested in it. However, there was not a single mention of it in the press apart from in a free sheet, although I do not know how it managed to wander into that—they must have had an incomplete page as it went to print.
In defence of my local regional paper, that meeting was well covered in The Press and Journal.
Mea culpa. Good on The Press and Journal. Did the article mention that an Aberdeen man spoke?
I welcome the idea of interpellation if it will introduce to Parliament greater accountability, which I would welcome in any guise. We should not even bother trialling it; we should just get on with it. We have reached the stage at which First Minister's question time in particular is farcical. We have a formulaic 20 minutes out of the only 30 minutes that are available for Parliament to call the Executive to account. It is becoming less and less satisfactory and the press have to pick through it for the peccadilloes and small change of our politics. We do ourselves no favours and—to return to my original assertion that we should think about how we are perceived when we consider our procedures—First Minister's question time does us no good whatever. That is no reflection on the First Minister, although it is a reflection on some other folk.
The fact is that one often attends excellent question-and-answer sessions that no one from the press is present to record, although they are the meat of daily politics in which people outside Parliament are interested. The convener of the Procedures Committee should seek some sort of meeting with the press about their coverage.
I have been talking about questions and how we organise business, and I have suggested that we would have more spontaneity and flexibility if we were better organised, but that does not extend to the Presiding Officer. He, too, is constrained by time—which he spends trying to find out before question time what members' supplementary questions will be. I listen to the answers, and then I decide whether or not to ask a supplementary and what it might be. I will tell members what my supplementary would have been had I been able to get in today—no I will not, because I have run out of time and I do not want to fall out with the Deputy Presiding Officer, too.
That was sagacious of you, Ms MacDonald. At this point, I will renege on my commitment to Cathie Craigie. I thank her for her note, which said that she could be left out if non-committee members wished to speak. I will allow Alex Johnstone a brief concluding comment, as we are coming to closing speeches.
Thank you, Presiding Officer. I feel guilty at having forced Cathie Craigie out.
This has been a useful debate, and the committee's report was intended to elicit just such comments, which will, I am sure, be very helpful to us. We heard comprehensive speeches from Christine Grahame and Margo MacDonald and—as ever—we heard pertinent and incisive contributions from Wendy Alexander and Susan Deacon. I reassure both of them that, although the eight options that are proposed might appear to include the option of extending parliamentary time, it was the view of a majority of Procedures Committee members that there is enough parliamentary time already, and that it is a question of how we use the time that should concern us.
This has been a useful debate: we can now go back to the committee and follow up our report in a way that will deliver for Parliament.
Iain Smith—among the pistachio, strawberry and chocolate 99s—came up with a line that I very much agree with. He is disappointed that the committee did not take a more radical look at the question of the parliamentary timetable. Wendy Alexander also made some very pertinent points that I could agree with.
However, it was Susan Deacon who hit the nail on the head. One of the first questions that the Procedures Committee discussed was Parliament's family-friendly policy. Susan Deacon was absolutely right: "family-friendly" has been twisted to mean that there is a vote at 5 o'clock every night. That point is fundamental to many of the things that the committee struggled with when it tried to rearrange the deckchairs. It found that it was rearranging them within a very rigid structure.
I take issue with Alex Johnstone on some of the points that he made—even though he is injured. He told us that there is nothing controversial in the committee's report on parliamentary time.
No—I was talking about the committee's other report.
Alex Johnstone is right on both counts. He said that the report was not particularly daring, and that is true. He raised the question of stage 3 debates. When I asked him what the solution was to the problem of members being unable to debate amendments, he said that it was to extend the amount of flexibility from 30 minutes to 60 minutes. What a pity he voted that suggestion down when he had the opportunity to include it in the committee's report—he kicked that idea out, so it is not in the report, which is not controversial because that proposal is not included. Alex Johnstone also told us that there was no appetite to change the parliamentary week, but what did he include as options 1A and 1B in the report on parliamentary time but proposals to change the parliamentary week? Some consistency would be useful.
Donald Gorrie told us that the most obvious dissatisfaction is with stage 3. He is right—we heard a lot of evidence on that, with a lot of people expressing dissatisfaction. He also said that he had hoped that committee members might have some radical ideas, but what a pity it is that some radical ideas that could have been proposed in the report on parliamentary time were taken out by those people.
I will name just one or two of them. Option 2A is:
"A clear recommendation to the Bureau to propose, whenever required, substantially longer for Stage 3s".
That is something that the Parliamentary Bureau is expected to do at the moment. It does not always get it right, but it will never always get it right. What is important is to ensure that flexibility exists whenever problems arise, but in this disappointing report—disappointing in this respect—there is absolutely nothing on how to introduce that flexibility.
I will give members examples of areas in which we could have introduced flexibility. Some will agree with my points, some will not. I contend that members should have had these points in the report in front of them so that they could express opinions on them. The first example is relaxation of the Wednesday timetable, with the possibility of exploring whether Wednesday decision time has necessarily to be at 5 pm. We could have explored whether, on occasion—it would not be compulsory—a debate or stage 3 of a bill could be extended on a motion or, in the case of a debate, on a recommendation from the Presiding Officer. We could have explored the possibility of extending by 30 minutes—we could even have explored the possibility of doing something as radical as extending meetings until 6 o'clock. What happened with the people who say they want radical thinking? They threw that idea out—they did not want it in the report, even for discussion: "Extending from 30 minutes to 60 minutes? Throw it out. It's not to be discussed in the report."
Alasdair Morgan said that debates are frequently stifled. If it happened now, it would not be the first time a wee note was passed to me saying, "Sorry, your contribution isn't required," or "You've only got two minutes."
Can we send him a note, please? [Laughter.]
I am glad I did not hear that.
As far as I understand it, members can indicate that they wish a debate to be extended—although I cannot remember it ever being done—thus allowing the Presiding Officer to make a decision. That would mean that members' contributions were not stifled. However, that proposal was thrown out, too.
Proposals on the proportion of debating time that is allocated to the different parties were also thrown out by those who said that they wanted a radical rethink. There have been criticisms of Opposition parties for using their time to have two debates, which leaves little time for back benchers—which is true—and particularly for Executive back benchers. I have heard that moan for quite a while in the Procedures Committee. Sixteen half-days each parliamentary year are allocated to the Opposition, with the rest of the days ending up as Executive time, but when people challenge the idea that the rest of the days should be Executive time, those who say they want to think radically say, "No, we don't want that in the report either. We don't want a radical rethink of how we allocate time in the chamber." We should establish that the time belongs to Parliament and not to the Executive.
There is one very good part of the report, and I commend it to members. It is the part on procedure and interpellation. I do not say that it is yet as it should be—it needs more work—but interpellation, as can be witnessed in other Parliaments, is aimed at holding Governments to account, at allowing more in-depth questioning on different subjects, and at allowing concentrated questions on specific subjects. Interpellation will allow that type of questioning. Themed questions have failed to allow that, and probably always will. It would only be an experiment, but we should give it a go. I think that members would find that they like the results.
I call Karen Gillon to close the debate for the Procedures Committee.
When would you like me to conclude my closing remarks?
You have six minutes and five, four, three, two, one second.
Thank you—it will be a short speech from me today. I am sure you will be glad of that.
I thank all members who have contributed to the debate, especially those who are not members of the Procedures Committee. People who sat in on the previous speech will be surprised to learn that Bruce McFee is, in fact, a member of the Procedures Committee. They will be even more surprised if they read the report. After having listened to him, they might think that there were lots of votes during debates in the Procedures Committee, but there was not a single vote. Mr McFee was not there when we concluded the report.
Hang on. I accept that people have legitimate reasons for not being at committees, but that is why Parliament has a process for substitutions.
If there were strong views—among SNP members in particular—I would have hoped that they would have been reflected in the report.
The point of the debate is that we hear from not just members of the Procedures Committee but other members of Parliament. Far too often, Procedures Committee debates are debates among members of the Procedures Committee, just as other committee debates become debates among members of those committees. It is an important change for the Procedures Committee that other members of Parliament believe that our debate is important and have got involved in it. That will help to move the debate on.
Karen Gillon is correct that I did not make it to the committee meeting in question. However, had I done so I would have been expressing my own views, not the views of the SNP group. Nevertheless, given that the committee was arguing for radical change, it seems strange that I would have had to be there to ensure that it did something about that.
It depends what Bruce McFee means by "radical change." Until I am convinced that we will not just fill the space that we have with people speaking for as long as they want to, I will not see the need for radical change that moves us into meeting every evening of the week. If people can convince me that we need longer sitting hours because of pressure on parliamentary time, I will be happy to accept that there is a need for such radical change.
I thank Karen Gillon for her generosity in giving way. Does she agree that with better forward planning and business management we could be flexible and identify late sittings a week in advance?
That is important.
Susan Deacon made the important point that the family-friendly nature of Parliament is not about the vote at 5 o'clock. However, it is important that people know when they will be able to leave and that they can make arrangements for that.
I am glad to see that so many members have come into the chamber. I welcome the First Minister to the Procedures Committee debate.
There has been universal agreement among the members who have contributed to the debate that interpellation is worthy of further exploration and trialling in this session of Parliament, given that legacy papers, such as the one that we got from the previous Procedures Committee, can sit on a shelf and are not necessarily taken forward by the successor committee. I am not against the more radical changes that others seek, but I think that interpellations are worthy of further discussion.
Although I accept that in some situations the need for notice of motions might preclude a worthwhile emergency issue being debated in anybody's time—Government or Opposition—to say that we cannot give people a week's notice of the motion for debate and amendments to it is simply ridiculous. I am not aware of many situations in which the text of the motion that was announced at 5 o'clock on a Tuesday night could not have been announced at 5 o'clock the week before, because it was the text that everybody was expecting. However, when members do not have the detail of the text, they might not have time to go away, do research and liaise with constituents and agencies. I am sure that we can, when there is an emergency issue to debate, devise procedures whereby the Presiding Officer would have the discretion to allow business to be changed the week before. We should generally have more notice.
I want to pick up on points that Christine Grahame made about ministerial statements. It is incumbent on Parliament to ensure that members have the best possible information so that they can contribute fully to the process. Ministerial statements being made available in advance—even if only half an hour—would be helpful in allowing members to make positive contributions to debates on statements.
The Procedures Committee has a lot of food for thought. I listened carefully to the point that we should just get on and do it—we need to do that. Those of us who sat through the process of discussing possible changes to the procedures for many months have found the process incredibly long and in some ways tortuous.
I want to pick up on one thing that Iain Smith said: it cannot be beyond the wit of Parliament and its committees to hold ministers to account. If that is becoming a problem and if committees cannot have a one-day-a-year meeting with ministers, there is something wrong with the procedures and we need to sort them out. The Conveners Group should certainly consider that.
There is a lot for us to reflect on, and we will in due course come back to Parliament with a final report on changes to standing orders. I thank members for their contributions to the debate.