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Chamber and committees

Plenary, 11 Nov 2004

Meeting date: Thursday, November 11, 2004


Contents


Bills

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Murray Tosh):

The next item of business is a debate on motion S2M-1982, in the name of Iain Smith, on behalf of the Procedures Committee, on the timescales and stages of bills. I invite Karen Gillon to speak to and move the motion as soon as she has retrieved her notes and got her breath back.

Karen Gillon (Clydesdale) (Lab):

For some time, members have expressed concern about the timetable for the process for legislation. Those concerns have been echoed by others inside and outwith the Parliament. A number of areas required detailed scrutiny and discussion. In carrying out that scrutiny, the Procedures Committee was mindful of the balance that needs to be struck to ensure that legislation is properly scrutinised and is not held up because of narrow political interests. The changes that are proposed today will help to strike that balance and will give members and others additional time to consider legislation. The committee proposes not a seismic shift but a carefully considered package of measures that will increase the accessibility of the process and improve the quality of legislation that is passed.

The main thrust of the proposed changes reflects the committee's unanimous view that there should be flexibility in the legislative system. Bills differ greatly from one another in both size and complexity, so it is difficult to have a simple one-size-fits-all process. In the course of the inquiry, it became apparent to the committee that time invested in the early stages of the process—front-loading—will reap benefits later, by reducing the number and complexity of issues that are outstanding by the time that stages 2 and 3 are reached. However, no matter how long the discussion and how involved the scrutiny, there will always be issues about which a political decision will need to be made, at the end of the day, because two sides cannot find a common way forward. In those cases, MSPs will be required to resolve the conflict by a majority vote, based on their political or personal views. However long and involved the legislative process is, we cannot get away from that. Sometimes members who are unhappy with a decision will choose to blame the process.

Many of the changes that we propose will require changes to standing orders. They fall into three main categories: first, longer minimum intervals between the stages of bills to allow amendments to be discussed and drafted; secondly, earlier lodging deadlines for amendments to give members more time to prepare for meetings at stage 2 and stage 3 after the amendments have been grouped; and thirdly, more flexibility in the timetabling of stage 3.

I will examine each stage individually and draw members' attention to the following points. I will deal first with stage 1. From the outset, it is important that there should be a dialogue between the Parliamentary Bureau, which sets the timetable, and the lead committee, which scrutinises the legislation. We are also keen to ensure that the dialogue between the lead committee and secondary committees is improved, to enable all those committees effectively to scrutinise legislation together. We believe that the dialogue that currently takes place can be improved and we urge the bureau to work with conveners to develop effective lines of communication. We accept fully that on almost every occasion when extension of a timetable was requested, that extension was granted. However, we believe that by improving dialogue at the beginning, the number of such requests would be reduced.

External agencies expressed concern about the timetable for consultation at stage 1. It is important that adequate time be allowed for that. Although the committee does not go so far as to suggest the 12 weeks for which the Executive consults, it recommends that a minimum period of six to eight weeks be allowed for consultation. That is far more than many committees currently allow and would improve the process.

A number of members expressed concern about the difficulties that they experience when a committee report is not available in sufficient time ahead of a stage 1 debate. That does not allow effective scrutiny and real decision making that is based on evidence. Therefore, we have suggested changes that would introduce a requirement for there to be a minimum of five sitting days between the publication of the report and the stage 1 debate. If that were not the case, Parliament would be required to vote to allow the stage 1 debate to go ahead.

On balance, the changes will lengthen the timetable at stage 1, but the committee believes that that front-loading will bring benefits at the later stages.

The intervals between stages were also of some concern. The committee recognises that the length of time between stages impacts on the ability of members to scrutinise legislation and to propose amendments. For that reason, we have recommended that the current interval between stages 1 and 2 be increased from seven sitting days to 11 sitting days. Similarly, time is required between stages 2 and 3 to consider the bill and potential amendments. As a result, we have recommended that, regardless of whether the bill has been amended at stage 2, the minimum interval between stage 2 and stage 3 should be nine sitting days. Those are the minimum intervals, and the committee hopes that, when there are particularly complex or controversial issues, the Parliamentary Bureau will consider a longer period.

We have recommended that the notice period for the lodging of amendments should be increased by a day. Although that change is not huge, we believe that it will be significant to members. The change increases the period from two days to three at stage 2 and from three days to four at stage 3. There will be an earlier deadline for stage 3 amendments on the final lodging day; it will be 12 noon rather than the current 2 pm. By bringing those deadlines forward it should be possible for the marshalled list and groupings to be available a day earlier than is currently the case. Members have indicated that they want such a change. Having access to those documents will enable members to finalise their preparations for each meeting. The change will also make the job of civil servants and clerks easier. It is important that we recognise that the family-friendly principles of the Parliament should not be exclusively the realm of members but, whenever possible, should be extended to the staff who work with us and for us.

We recognise that any such changes in the rules are only part of what is needed to make the process work to best advantage. We urge members to lodge their amendments, whenever possible, as early as they can. We welcome it when the Executive follows its long-standing policy of lodging amendments, whenever possible, five days prior to the deadline, and we urge other members to do the same when they can so that all members can scrutinise the amendments that are placed before the Parliament.

The committee recognises that stage 2 is inevitably a fairly intensive process. We accept that committees will often have to meet weekly during stage 2 of a big bill and sometimes more than once a week. We recommend a single lodging day for both days to simplify the process when a committee meets twice in a week. Similarly, if stage 3 is to be held over two days, we ask for a single lodging day.

On stage 3 timetabling, we have recommended a number of changes that we believe will improve the stage 3 process, but which are not an excuse for not having a good timetabling motion. The committee felt strongly that the timetabling motion is the most important part of the process. The changes that we envisage will allow flexibility to ensure that all amendments are spoken to and will allow a 30-minute move from the timetable, but they are not an alternative to a well-thought-out timetabling motion.

I believe that the changes are significant and that they will improve the timetabling and legislative process in the Parliament. I urge the Parliament to endorse the motion in the name of Iain Smith.

I move,

That the Parliament notes the Procedures Committee's 7th Report, 2004 (Session 2), Timescales and Stages of Bills (SP Paper 228), and agrees that the changes to Standing Orders set out in Annexe A to the report be made with effect from 10 January 2005.

Mr Bruce McFee (West of Scotland) (SNP):

I should have been immediately suspicious of the smile on my colleague Bruce Crawford's face when he heard the news that he was off the Procedures Committee and that I had been delegated the task. Any lingering doubts about the reason for that smile were dispelled the day that he arrived at my office with half a hundredweight of paperwork, notes and reports that covered the period that he had served on the committee. Judging by its condition, I would say that some of the paperwork had had more than one previous owner. Therefore, it was with more than a little feeling of revenge that, in my new position as deputy whip in the SNP group, I had the pleasure of visiting Bruce's office to inform him that his input was required for two Procedures Committee debates this afternoon—including one that he thought he had managed to avoid.

If nothing else, the Procedures Committee has anorak appeal. However, to leave it at that would be to misrepresent the importance of the committee's work to the effective operation of the Parliament. The report is the result of a second fairly lengthy inquiry by the committee. I came in at the tail end, but there is a distinct advantage to being a tail-ender in that the really heavy work of evidence taking has been concluded and members are left solely with the transcripts and the summaries.

I do not intend to cover every aspect of the report; that would be impossible in the time available. Although much examination took place to ascertain the role of committees in pre-legislative scrutiny and to determine the value of publishing draft bills, I believe that the evidence was inconclusive and that the committee was right not to make specific recommendations on those matters. However, the committee was in no doubt about the need for adequate time for consideration at every stage of a bill's progress, to enhance members' ability to scrutinise the bill and so improve the legislation that is enacted.

There was general consensus that ensuring the effectiveness of the stage 1 inquiry is crucial, because that inquiry not only informs general understanding and the level of debate at stage 1, but sets the scene for later stages by flagging up issues to be addressed. That is why the committee's recommendation that the overall timetable for the stage 1 inquiry should take proper account of the time needed for both written and oral evidence—for example, by allowing at least six to eight weeks for written evidence—makes eminent sense.

The committee's view that the lead committee in particular should consult all other relevant committees before the Parliamentary Bureau agrees a timetable should help to ensure that an adequate period is allocated for the stage 1 inquiry. The recommendation to change standing orders—to provide a minimum of a week between the publication of a stage 1 report and the holding of the stage 1 debate—should help to inform the debate and the future course of the bill.

The recommended increase from a minimum of seven sitting days between stages 1 and 2 to a minimum of 11 sitting days—in effect, an additional week—provides members with an enhanced minimum time to help them to prepare for stage 2.

I do not want to dwell too long on the proposals to change the arrangements for lodging amendments at stages 2 and 3—Karen Gillon has already described those proposals—but I will say that their adoption will add to the overall consideration that is given to a bill and will aid better understanding of the effects of amendments.

The committee had considerable concerns that the overall time presently allocated to stage 3 is insufficient. The committee felt that business managers required to consult more widely before recommending a timetable to Parliament. I believe that the flexibility that the report suggests on timetabling motions, and the degree of latitude that it recommends be afforded to the Presiding Officer to take account of circumstances as proceedings unfold, will help to achieve a better distribution of the time available. Coupled with the proposed ability of members to extend a particular deadline by up to 30 minutes—subject to a maximum of 30 minutes being added to the day's business—those suggestions will assist in removing the absurd situation of some amendments being formally moved with no debate at stage 3.

At present, the debate at the end of stage 3 can be as short as 30 minutes. That should not be allowed to continue—especially as it reduces, or even eliminates, the ability of back benchers to speak. The committee's recommendation will not ensure that all back benchers who desire to speak will be able to do so, but it will go part of the way towards addressing an indefensible situation. That recommendation, combined with a requirement for revised or supplementary explanatory notes to be provided four days ahead of stage 3 whenever new sections or schedules have been added or whenever existing provisions have been substantially amended, should reduce the rush and should help better to inform deliberations and debate.

The proposals that are before us should help to improve the standard of the legislation that the Parliament passes and should add to members' understanding of the process. I urge members to support them. My application for an anorak is in the post.

Mr Jamie McGrigor (Highlands and Islands) (Con):

In order to improve the opportunities for members and others to participate in the making of sound legislation, it is necessary to allow enough time for the purpose of bills and the consequences of amendments to them to be fully understood by all concerned. It would help a great deal if lead committees consulted other relevant committees before a timetable is agreed with the Parliamentary Bureau. At least two months should be allowed for the submission of written evidence and the consideration of oral evidence, and committees should be able to share that evidence.

I agree with the Procedures Committee's recommendation that there should be a minimum of a week between the publication of a stage 1 report and the holding of a stage 1 debate. The Conservatives also agree that the minimum interval between stage 1 and stage 2 should be increased from seven to 11 sitting days, as that will give members an extra week to digest the points that have been raised at stage 1 before they tackle the complications of stage 2.

At stage 2, we face a problem that many people highlighted, especially in relation to the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Bill and the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Bill, which is that there is not enough time to digest and understand some amendments well enough to comment on them. An interesting example of that occurred during consideration of the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Bill. The Environment and Rural Development Committee received a written submission from the Scottish Gamekeepers Association that referred to amendments that had been lodged on Monday 26 January, which were not published until Tuesday 27 January and which were to be debated at the committee's meeting at 10 am on Wednesday 28 January.

In his letter, Alex Hogg, the chairman of the SGA, explained that the SGA committee was made up of full-time professional wildlife managers whose remit was to advise parliamentarians of any adverse or other effects that proposals might have on rural employment, wildlife and the countryside and to recommend considered amendments to support the rural spectrum. I point out that the SGA can afford to employ only one full-time member of staff to assist it. Given that the nature of the work of SGA committee members means that they are usually outdoors from the crack of dawn to late in the evening, it proved impossible for them to respond to amendments and to prepare briefing notes for relevant committee members in time for the meeting.

As the SGA has been extremely useful in explaining the practical effects of amendments to bills that relate to the countryside, I consider that its evidence is particularly relevant and that its complaint should be taken seriously by the Parliament. If we are to be open and accessible, it is important that practical people from all backgrounds are able to understand what an amendment means and what consequences it will have, especially if they have been asked to submit evidence and are involved in the bill process. Cloudy water takes time to settle, just as complicated amendments take time to become clear. The point is that it is clear that the current procedure discriminates against the busy working person and so is against the ethos of the Scottish Parliament.

I hope that that example will encourage members to support the Procedures Committee's recommendation to increase the notice period for amendments that are lodged at stage 2 from two days to three days and to bring forward the deadline on the final lodging day from 2 pm to 12 noon. We Conservatives agree with the recommendation that when a committee holds two or more stage 2 meetings in the same week, only the lodging deadline for the first meeting should apply. We also agree that a minimum interval of nine sitting days between stage 2 and stage 3 should apply to all bills, not just those that have been amended.

I am glad that the First Minister highlighted the fact that bad law has resulted from a process that was too rushed. He said that he sometimes felt uncomfortable about taking the whole of stage 3 of a bill in a single day. There have been occasions on which major amendments have been passed, but there has been no time for them to be considered before the bill was voted through that same afternoon. We agree with the recommendation that the notice period for lodging amendments at stage 3 should be increased from three days to four days and that there should be a single lodging deadline when stage 3 is to be taken over two days.

More time should be allowed for stage 3 proceedings and more flexibility should be built into timetabling motions to allow the best use of the time that is available. We agree that the Presiding Officer should be given discretion to take account of which members should be allowed to speak as proceedings unfold. It is also a good idea to have a new rule that will allow a member to move a motion to extend a timetabling deadline.

We believe that the changes, which are based on the experience of our new Parliament, will help to avoid bad law and will secure sounder law for Scotland in future.

Donald Gorrie (Central Scotland) (LD):

I welcome the proposals as moving in the right direction because they address a lot of important issues. I hope that the committee will revisit the timescales and stages of bills and will consider more radical proposals in future, but I am not against what it proposes.

The background to the report is that we have no revising chamber and even exalted and usually sensible people such as David Steel have suggested that we need a body similar to the House of Lords. I do not agree with that argument at all, but to counter it, we must produce a more robust system for scrutinising bills than we have at the moment. We must ensure that we get a bill right first time, because we do not get a second kick at the ball.

Naturally, there is pressure from the Executive to get its legislative proposals through. It always wants the rapidest possible timetable and says, "Oh, we must get the bill through by June," or whatever. We must be strong enough to resist that and we must have fair scrutiny of the detail of all bills that are introduced.

As other members have said, the amendment process at stage 2 needs more time. In my experience, the various interested bodies that have knowledge in the area of work under consideration get hold of MSPs and say, "We really need amendments that say A, B and C." A member pursues those points, and the Executive often has some sympathy with them but thinks that there is a bit of special pleading and going over the top on the part of the interested bodies, so it responds with another amendment that, it thinks, satisfies the demand. However, the member has to get back to the pressure groups to ask whether the Executive's proposal satisfies their point and to give them the chance to say that the amendment does not address a particular point. There must be time for such consultation and ping-pong to take place, so we need slightly longer than is suggested in the new proposal for the stage 2 timetable.

One point about stage 2 that the report mentions should be tightened up. Sometimes, a raft of amendments is introduced to make considerable changes to a bill or to add a new aspect to it. They might have been consulted on in general terms in the committee's stage 1 inquiry, but the mechanism that is proposed to address the committee's generally accepted wish might have to be examined in more detail. Committees have sometimes consulted at stage 2, but the rule should be that they must consult if significant new proposals are made or if, even though the proposal is not new, the mechanism for achieving it is new. If it is known that the Executive will support the proposal and so it will get through, it is all the more necessary for it to be scrutinised.

Bruce McFee dealt well with the timetable for stage 3. It is essential to have a more flexible system for the debate at stage 3, and, again, the proposals could go further. We have no history of filibustering here, but there is no fear of filibustering, because the limit on the length of speeches is so tight. I think that the rule should be that any member who wants to speak on an amendment at stage 3 or who wants to make a speech in the stage 3 debate should be able to do so. That might not affect how the voting goes, but it is important that there is a full debate at stage 3. As the committee's report says, out of nine bills, two had amendments moved without debate and four others had very restricted debate, often on the most sensitive parts.

The trouble with timetabling motions is that it is difficult to foretell exactly where the time pressures will be. Usually, there is more pressure in relation to a particular part of a bill. Many bills have one or two aspects that arouse controversy. Sometimes, the timetable for those aspects is too tight, while the timetable for the bill as a whole is not. The Presiding Officer must be given flexibility and, as I understand it, that will happen under the committee's proposals.

Members who have requested to speak can sometimes be restricted, but we should be encouraging more members to speak during debates on stage 3 amendments. At the moment, the debate on whether to pass the bill is usually just a rerun of the debates that were held in committee; very few non-committee members tend to take part. We should be encouraging them to do so. If they knew that they would be given time and that they would be able to speak, they would participate.

I hope that this point will be taken seriously—it is the most important point that I want to make. We need a stage 2A—something between stage 2 and stage 3—when the committee and the Executive can re-examine the shape of a bill as amended at stage 2 and try to negotiate the aspects that are still controversial or work out some good amendments to satisfy, if possible, the various points of view. That might clarify exactly what any dispute is about and appropriate amendments could be lodged in that light.

We need a stage between stages 2 and 3, because we must get over the criticism that we do not examine bills carefully enough in the later stages. Initial consultation is excellent but, towards the end, the process gets like a cycle race around a track. People drool round slowly for several laps, but suddenly they all sprint like hell. That is how we deal with our bills. The last stage is too much of a sprint, and we should space it out more. I hope that the Procedures Committee will consider those suggestions in its next round of consultation.

Pauline McNeill (Glasgow Kelvin) (Lab):

I recognise that the Procedures Committee has a key function in the Parliament—and I really mean that. I know that this might have been trailed as a dull debate. However, far from being anoraks, I think that those members who are here are democrats, as we care about the democratic process.

The debate is essentially about ensuring that we achieve the highest quality of legislation with the appropriate amount of democratic scrutiny. I believe that the process is too rushed at the moment—not in every case, but in too many cases. I welcome the work that the Procedures Committee has done. As Donald Gorrie says, if we want to resist the idea that is already formulating in some people's minds of a second chamber, we must ensure that our process is not rushed, that we take the proper amount of time and that proper scrutiny is attached to the process.

I was given the opportunity to give evidence to the Procedures Committee, for which I was grateful. It was strange to be at the other end of the table—now I know how witnesses feel when they are being grilled. Actually, the Procedures Committee was quite kind to me and I appreciated the chance to describe my experience as a convener.

I have a number of observations to make. At the start of the various stages of the consideration of a bill, it is fundamental that committee members have enough time and the right information to be able to understand the bill's scope and what it seeks to do. They should be able to understand in full the contents of any bill. In that regard, it is crucial that the accompanying documents are easy to understand and that they carry with them a full explanation. My recent experience has been that not everything is fully explained in the explanatory notes. In some cases, they have contained inaccurate information. They come at the beginning of the process and we rely on them, so we must get that part of the process absolutely right.

It has always struck me as odd that there are many accompanying notes at the beginning of the process, but when a bill is amended at stage 2, there are no notes and no clues as to why a bill has been changed in a particular way. I have yet to be told why we decided to work in that way, and I hope that we change things. Such a way of working makes no sense, particularly for members who are not members of the relevant committee. When they read an amended bill, they must understand why it has been amended in a particular way.

Stage 1 reports can flag up important issues that require further evidence, and there must be scope in the process to take evidence at stage 2. Donald Gorrie suggested that there should be a stage 2A, but I think that, provided that there is enough flexibility in the system, if committees need to take evidence at stage 2, they should be allowed to do so. That might be a compromise stage between stages.

There are, of course, different types of bill—not all bills are the same. The Parliament has dealt with general bills that have miscellaneous provisions, the scope of which are so wide that we sometimes come to the Parliament at stage 3 and find that issues have been attached to them that we have never debated previously. We must consider that matter too, as we must we find another way that does not prevent people from lodging amendments, but that ensures that there is scrutiny before we reach stage 3.

The Procedures Committee is right to talk about mandatory timescales for consultation and spaces between stages. The committee has done really good work. I appreciate the point that Karen Gillon made. The report may not be revolutionary and perhaps we would like to go further, but it will genuinely help to change things for the better.

We all have examples in which timescales have been too short. One example that strikes me is the Tenements (Scotland) Bill, in which I had an interest and which was dealt with by a committee other than mine. Consideration of that bill took place over an extremely short period.

It should be recognised that we are not always present at stages 1 and 2 not because we are not interested, but because we are doing other things. We must make it possible for members who are not members of the relevant committee to feel as much part of the process as members of that committee do. We must develop such a culture.

There is an issue for back benchers in particular in respect of balancing out their views. There should be more negotiation involving committees and the Executive about what a committee can achieve in a given timescale. In my recent experience, the bureau has certainly never denied my committee's requests, but there is always an argument about time.

I want to talk about stage 2. When I have considered the procedure, it has always struck me that a good sketch would show an MSP—particularly on their first day—laying their eyes on a marshalled list for the first time. Bruce McFee talked about looking at things with fresh eyes, but I do not know how he felt when he first came to the Parliament. There are groupings and documents that I cannot discuss here, but all those documents sit in front us and we pretend that we are experts and that we know every step of the way. Following the procedure is a particular skill. When I first became convener of the Justice 2 Committee, I nearly died when I saw the brief for the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, which ran to 84 pages and covered a solid 19 weeks. I thought that I would not be able to do what I was meant to do, but we managed somehow.

It is fair to consider the process and to make it as easy for members as possible. The fact that there is no single document and that we must cut and paste from the Business Bulletin every time an amendment appears is a disgrace for the Parliament. There should be a single source of information, so that if any member wants to know how many amendments have been lodged, they can go to that source, find everything and make a judgment about what they want to do in relation to a bill.

Karen Gillon pointed out that the work of the clerks in rushing to meet timetable deadlines has been extraordinary. I have experience of speaking to clerks at the stroke of midnight to check groupings. At that stage, a convener cannot really reject groupings if they are for the following day, yet that is meant to be part of the process.

Much of the process must change for the better. There should be recommendations about consultation, and I think that there should be eight weeks rather than six weeks for consultation at stage 1. The norm should be eight weeks, as that is when we consult the public, and negotiations should take place if the consultation period is to be shorter than that.

To summarise, a very good piece of work has been produced. I hope that the Parliament will adopt the report's recommendations. We must constantly scrutinise our processes to check that they are working. We must get our processes right if we want to avoid debate about the quality of our legislation and about whether there should be a second chamber. I whole-heartedly support the Procedures Committee's recommendations.

Contrary to all expectation and precedent, we are behind the clock. I ask the closing speakers to stick strictly to their time limits.

Mr McGrigor:

Karen Gillon said that members' bills should never be held up by narrow political interest. I agree with her. There is no doubt that time invested early will produce a richer harvest. I also agree with her that there needs to be more dialogue between committees and perhaps more sharing of evidence taking. The committee rooms in this building are large enough to allow that to happen. It is all well and good for members of a committee to reach a consensus about who should represent the committee at another committee's meeting at which shared evidence is to be taken, but I defend at all costs the right of any committee member to attend and speak at such a meeting. That should be set in concrete.

I listened to Bruce McFee's contribution and I am sure that his description of himself as a "tail-ender" is far too modest. He made a good point about lead committees holding dialogue with subsidiary committees at an early stage before timetables are set.

Donald Gorrie talked about the need for a more robust system and said that we must be strong enough to withstand pressures and take enough time to scrutinise bills. I agree with him. It is worth taking the time to get something right.

The Procedures Committee recommends a change to standing orders to make the Executive memorandum on delegated powers in a bill a mandatory document. That is a good idea, as is the recommendation that revised explanatory notes be provided four days before a stage 3 debate, which would greatly help the understanding of amendments to bills at stage 2. A revised financial memorandum would also be extremely helpful in circumstances in which the financial implications of a bill are changed by amendments at stage 2. Pauline McNeill made those points well.

It is vital that the Presiding Officer should have flexibility at stage 3. He can help to redress difficult situations that arise at stage 3, which can be unpredictable, as members know. He should have the discretion to allow more time for a debate if it is perfectly obvious that that is needed. [Applause.]

Jamie McGrigor received applause from members for being brief—should I sit down now?

Members:

Yes.

Bruce Crawford:

It will take only a couple of minutes for me to make a few comments that I think are reasonably important. I agree with Karen Gillon that there is no seismic shift. However, important changes and adjustments are being proposed that will significantly improve the legislative process.

Pauline McNeill—I am losing my notes—cheered me up by saying that in what we are doing we are democrats rather than anoraks. That is an important distinction. At times the process might be tedious, but the reports that the Procedures Committee has produced demonstrate the importance of the committee's work. The nature of the committee's work is the gradual, continual improvement of the Parliament's processes. The Procedures Committee cannot be revolutionary, because its recommendations must be considered by the Parliament and if we want to make progress by consensus, revolution ain't the way.

The committee's inquiry was about improving the Parliament's legislative process, not for members but for those who are outside the Parliament. The recommendations are about increasing transparency and enabling people to participate more successfully with us in fashioning the laws that emanate from the Parliament. Frankly, I think that there is no point in having the Parliament unless civic Scotland and individuals outwith the Parliament participate and feel that they can be involved and can contribute constructively and meaningfully.

The processes that we adopted at the beginning of the Parliament were better than those at Westminster, but they were not the best that they could be. It is to the great credit of the Parliament that we have agreed to move on, adjust our processes and bring about a different way of doing business. We are only at the start of the journey, which will be taken by on-going, incremental small steps—it will not always involve a revolution. Let us continue that journey as we have been going.

The Minister for Parliamentary Business (Ms Margaret Curran):

If ever there was a time for me to say, "Formally moved," perhaps this is it. However, I will briefly outline the Executive's response because the discussion is important. The Executive welcomes many of the recommendations in the Procedures Committee's seventh report of 2004, on the timescales and stages of bills. As the Executive is the primary source of the legislation that the Parliament scrutinises, we have a direct interest in ensuring that the procedures work efficiently and effectively. I concur strongly with the comments that my predecessor, Patricia Ferguson, made when she gave evidence to the committee in March. She noted that managing the legislative programme is perhaps the most important part of the Parliament's business and that it is vital to ensure that the process works smoothly and efficiently, as far as is reasonably possible.

The underlying principle is that the Parliament should give legislative proposals due scrutiny. Committees must be supported in carrying out that important activity to ensure critical analysis, integrity and transparency in their evidence taking and decision making. All members who have spoken in the debate embraced that point. The interests of those who will be affected by the legislation and of those who will implement it must also be borne in mind.

We all agree that the passage of legislation is a complex process. Parliamentary time is always at a premium, but that should not mean that we need to sacrifice due process or clarity. An effective balance must be struck and it is therefore essential that the Parliament's procedures should be reviewed from time to time and that improvements should be made where appropriate. I hope that the proposed changes will simplify the legislative process and make it easier for people to follow and to understand how bills have developed, especially during the detailed consideration at stage 2. Although some of the changes appear relatively minor, they are not at all cosmetic. It is important that any changes are improvements and that they do not undermine the serious business of legislating.

Some of the recommendations will place additional burdens on the Parliament and the Executive, notably the new requirements to provide updated explanatory notes and financial memoranda. However, we accept that those changes are designed to improve the process for all concerned and that, as Pauline McNeill said, they should assist members and others who have an interest in the passage of legislation. I understand that the Parliament's legislation team plans to continue the review process, with a view to devising new methods of presenting information that will, we hope, make it easier for members and others to follow the process of lodging, considering and disposing of amendments to bills. The Executive bill teams would be happy to be involved in the planned pilots and to provide feedback—I hope that the legislation team will take up that offer.

With the 50 Executive bills in the first session behind us, as well as many more in the second, we have tried to learn from practical experience. After the most recent election, we reviewed and sharpened our procedures, from policy development, through public consultation and analysis and the drafting of a bill, the parliamentary stages and royal assent to implementation and putting the act to work, which is obviously important.

We expect the changes to lead to improvements and the Executive is committed to working with the Parliament to ensure that that is the case. I confirm that the Executive is content for the changes to be implemented on 10 January 2005, as agreed by the Parliamentary Bureau. I am happy for the Executive to work closely with the Procedures Committee as we develop the processes.

Iain Smith (North East Fife) (LD):

I know what members are thinking—we wait for a whole year for a Procedures Committee debate and then two come along at once. I know that members also think that the Parliamentary Bureau has no sense of humour, but if they looked at the members' business item that is coming up after this debate, they would realise that it does. For those who did not get that, the motion is called "Dying with Dignity", which is what I will try to do in the next 10 minutes.

I thank the members of the Procedures Committee not just for this report but for the one on members' bills that we have just debated. As the Deputy Presiding Officer will know, the Procedures Committee is a strange beast. The committee tends to talk for a long time about certain things and then suddenly a new idea comes out of the blue and the committee moves in a slightly different direction and comes up with a set of proposals that will, we hope, help to improve the business of the Parliament. I am grateful to committee members for the work that they have done in preparing the two reports that we have had before us today.

I would like to say a particular thanks to the Scottish National Party. I am well known for my ability to forget names, so the fact that Bruce changed to Bruce on the committee was helpful to me as convener. I thank the committee clerks for the extraordinary amount of work that they do in producing the reports and materials for the committee's sometimes rather esoteric debates, and the Executive and other witnesses who participated in our discussions. We should pay particular thanks to the non-parliamentary bodies that contributed to the proceedings by giving written and oral evidence to the committee about how the parliamentary procedures work for them. This is not just about how Parliament deals with its own business internally, but about how our business is perceived and how people contribute to it. As Jamie McGrigor rightly highlighted, people can contribute to the process of the development of legislation.

We probably did not go as far in our recommendations as many of those outside bodies would have liked, but we have to balance the need for consultation with the need to make decisions, and balance the role of civic Scotland to advise and inform our decisions with that of MSPs to reach conclusions on that advice and information.

Susan Deacon (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab):

Can the convener of the Procedures Committee advise whether the committee has any plans to take forward the recommendation of the previous committee to shift the balance in the Parliament towards greater post-legislative scrutiny, which I recall was also supported by the former Social Justice Committee? We must recognise that no matter how effective our processes for consultation are in the laboratory of the committee room or the chamber, what really matters is how the legislation impacts on the world outside. Now that we have put all these acts of Parliament on the statute book we need to test them and ensure that they are doing what we wanted them to do.

Iain Smith:

It is important that the Parliament gets involved in post-legislative scrutiny. The Procedures Committee does not need to do anything for that to happen because such scrutiny does not require changes to the standing orders; indeed, the Local Government and Transport Committee is already conducting post-legislative scrutiny of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2001. What is required is for committees, the bureau and business managers to ensure that sufficient time is available for committees to conduct that post-legislative scrutiny, which is vital, as Susan Deacon rightly says.

The Procedures Committee proposes a timetable for stage 1 that is shorter than the Executive's recommended 12-week timetable for consultation. It is rare that stage 1 will be dealing with a proposal on which there has not been prior consultation; indeed, if we approve the proposals on members' bills today, that will be even less likely. There will usually have been a previous white paper, draft bill or consultation paper on the proposal. Stage 1 should be about identifying, first, the issues involved where changes have been made as a result of the pre-legislative consultation and why those changes have been made; and secondly, conversely, where there have been no changes, why no changes have been made. Although the debate at stage 1 is meant to be about the general principles, it also tends to identify areas where amendments should be introduced. That is important. Stage 1 should not just be a rerun of previous consultations. Ultimately, there comes a point when "good consultation" means that the Executive or the Parliament agreed with me and "bad consultation" means that it did not agree with me. We should draw the line for where consultation should end.

The extra day for stage 2 amendments is important. It does not seem much to add one day into the process, but it will normally mean that the marshalled list will be available on a Friday to members considering stage 2 with a committee. The marshalled list will, we hope, also be available on the Parliament's website to outside bodies that may wish to contribute. That is important, and gives members the weekend in which to consider carefully any amendments that they may wish to lodge.

The extra day will allow both the marshalled list and the groupings to be available one day earlier at stages 2 and 3, and again that will assist members and outside bodies to prepare for important debates. That is particularly important at stage 3 because it will allow better planning of debates. For example, it will allow members to identify to which groups they want to contribute and feed that information to their business managers who, in turn, will feed it to the bureau. Hopefully, that will mean that timetabling motions will be better than they have sometimes been in the past, so the flexibility that we are building into timetabling might be less required.

There have been some helpful contributions to this afternoon's debate. Donald Gorrie said that we are moving in the right direction but mentioned that the committee could perhaps revisit the matter in the future. It is in our long-term work plan, so we might have a more fundamental root-and-branch look at how the legislative process in the Parliament has functioned to date and whether it is effective in doing all the things that it needs to do. However, that will come much further down the track. I suggest that we should not revisit timetabling for a considerable length of time, to allow the changes that we have proposed to bed in.

Committees can take evidence at stage 2 if they want to. If a fundamental amendment has come forward and a committee thinks that it does not have enough information to be able to make a decision on it, it can delay the discussion and create a pause in the process to take additional evidence. That provision has not been used yet, but it is there. If a committee told the bureau that it needed more time at stage 2 to take evidence on a particularly difficult amendment, I am sure that the bureau would consider the matter sensibly.

On the question of any member being able to speak at stage 3, I am not sure that I would go as far as Donald Gorrie, but it should be emphasised that there is a right in standing orders for anyone who is moving an amendment to speak to it. One reason for the flexibility that we are building into timetabling motions is to allow that to happen. Amendments will no longer be moved without anyone speaking to them unless the member decides that they do not want to speak to them.

Pauline McNeill made valuable contributions both in her evidence to the committee and today. Some of the points that she raised were reflected by Margaret Curran in her contribution, including the proposals on explanatory notes and financial memoranda. If our proposals are approved, there will be a requirement in standing orders for explanatory notes and financial memoranda to be updated at stage 3 if there have been significant changes at stage 2. We are particularly pleased that the Executive—much to our surprise—agreed to that.

The points that were made about marshalled lists and the availability of amendments are important. We had early discussions on them and I am pleased to say that the Parliament's legislative team is considering how it can improve documents. It is looking for some committees to volunteer to pilot the new documentation; I have a horrible feeling that the Local Government and Transport Committee might be experimented on when it considers the Transport (Scotland) Bill, but we will wait and see. We are considering ways to improve the documentation that is available to members and the public to make stages 2 and 3 easier to follow.

We also suggested that there should be a single list of amendments that have been lodged so that one does not have to cut and paste from copies of the Business Bulletin to keep up to date with amendments, and that suggestion has been examined if not already implemented. It will be possible to go to a bills web page before the publication of the marshalled list and find all the amendments that have been lodged to date.

I am pleased to say that I have just about managed to fill the time. I conclude by saying that we had some discussion with the Executive, the committee clerks and the legislation team about the commencement date for the proposals. We wanted a single commencement date so that bills are not running under the old system and the new system at the same time. It was thought best to introduce the changes at the end of the Christmas recess, so the proposals will come into play for all bills operating on or after 10 January 2005. That will allow time for the system to be implemented in a sensible way.

I commend the proposals to the Parliament and hope that members will support the motion and the amendments to standing orders that are contained in the report.

The Deputy Presiding Officer:

There is not enough time for me to indicate that I would welcome a motion without notice to bring forward decision time to now, because by the time the minister has stood and moved a motion formally and I have asked for assent, it will be 5 o'clock, which it now is.