Chamber and committees

We have an understanding of the increase in staff numbers. We have had a number of part-time staff and temporary employees. On the overall number, David McGill will be able to give you a detailed view of the actual increase in staffing, if that would be helpful.

You are quite right. The underpinning to all that is complicated, and I believe that David McGill is the best person to answer your question in detail.

I would go directly to David for a response to that specific question.

I would in the first instance say that we operate to indices that have been agreed by Parliament and to which we have adhered since we decoupled our members’ salary costs from those at Westminster some years ago. At that point, we agreed to adhere to the ASHE index, which, last year, would have produced a 5.1 per cent increase in MSPs’ salaries. Given the circumstances in that year, the corporate body took the view that it would suspend the arrangement and cancel the increase.

With regard to staff cost provision, again, that relates to the index that we have established. Of course, what salary increases are passed on to members of staff are a matter for each MSP, but the move protects the integrity of the sum that it was agreed was necessary for MSPs to be able to fulfil their function and to have the complement of staff at their disposal to achieve that aim. It would be wrong to remove ourselves from those two indices without very careful consideration.

Thank you, convener. I would ordinarily have made an opening statement. Were you expecting me to do that?

I come to the debate with no fixed agenda; I have been mulling over the issues involved. I was interested in Martin Whitfield’s speech and I thank him for the debate that he has initiated.

I have had an interest in parliamentary procedure over the years that I have been in the Parliament, and I am the last serving MSP who sat on the Commission on Parliamentary Reform as an MSP in the previous session, albeit that Pam Duncan-Glancy was there as a lay member. I also published a rather contentious report at the end of my first session here in 2010.

The report was contentious because I observed, as somebody who had come from a business world to the Parliament, that I was surprised at the number of colleagues who turned up for work at the crack of noon back then. I also commented on what I felt was a disparity between the workload that I had as a regional member and the workload that constituency members appeared to have. I think that the workloads have balanced out in many respects over the years.

A lot of the points that I made were subsequently picked up, and some came about in the Commission on Parliamentary Reform. When I looked at my report today, I was struck to see that on First Minister’s question time I had observed that

“What we have in First Minister’s Questions each week is 30 minutes of tedious verbal torture. Despite the repeated and determined efforts of the current Presiding Officer, there is clear need for procedural change.”

We have reformed. Ken Macintosh made it 45 minutes of “tedious verbal torture” and today we managed more than an hour.

I also noted that I quoted something that Lord Foulkes, who was a member in that session of Parliament, said:

“Question Times are pathetic rituals of questions which are read, often badly, and answers drafted by civil servants with no apparent input from the minister delivering them.”

I feel that some of those criticisms are still true today. However, I note that nobody who joined the Parliament in May has yet sat in it as a full chamber of members. That is regrettable, but I am not sure how fundamentally important I have come to believe it is. For all the reform as a result of the commission, the most radical reform of the Parliament was brought about by the events of the pandemic—reforms that we would never have contemplated in any other circumstance. The hybrid arrangement that we have arrived at works very well. As a constituency member, I find that my time is far better deployed by not being here on a day when I have no particular contribution to make.

Yes. Those points have been well made and I support them, which is not what I might have expected to hear myself say when we began this experiment. I think that the hybrid arrangement has worked well and that it would be a retrograde step to decide that we cannot function in that way. It has its faults. We have seen its positives and its negatives. The comment made by John Mason about the lack of ability to intervene in a hybrid arrangement is a valid one and sometimes, of course, the technology has failed, which has caused its own issues.

I might say and may consider whether we need to have decision time at the end of business. Could we not have it at the start of the next day’s business? Some people might say that that would interrupt the vote and the passion of the debate, but we are having yesterday’s votes tonight. It would give us a more fixed certainty if we knew that we were going to have decision time for the previous day’s business at 2 o’clock every day. We would then be without the extended uncertainty about when decision time might come.

I missed that.

I am in favour of electronic voting. To be able to deploy my time as a constituency member more efficiently, I am not here on certain days when I am not contributing to the proceedings of the Parliament. It follows that being able to vote remotely is fundamental. If we move to a more permanent arrangement in which remote voting is allowed, I hope that we will be able to evolve a more robust technology that we can rely on.

I was slightly concerned yesterday that parliamentary proceedings went ahead when it became apparent that the BlueJeans network had failed. I am not sure that, as a corporate body, we have approved that process as an operational practice for the Parliament. My understanding is that we have approved a hybrid process for Parliament, which, as far as I know, does not include a provision that one can watch the proceedings on television and that is in any way satisfactory. If we are going to have a hybrid arrangement, it has to work within rules and not be adjusted ad hoc, as we ended up doing yesterday.

I finish with a particular point that relates to lengthy answers and questions. One of the problems that the commission established is that the Presiding Officer’s powers are limited. The Parliament would be required to agree to enhance the power of the Presiding Officer to the equivalent of that of the Speaker of the Republic of Ireland’s Parliament, who is able to set a limit of 90 seconds on ministerial responses, after which their microphones switch off. He is also able to say to ministers that they have not answered the question.

When I spoke to the Speaker, he said that, in practice, he never had to do either, because ministers had now disciplined themselves to answer within 90 seconds and to answer the question—to be upbraided in the chamber for not doing so is seen as a serious offence against Parliament. We could have something similar.

To come back to Sarah Boyack’s point about concise answers and questions, I do not know what the time limit would be. Unfortunately, we have never successfully achieved or implemented the voluntary arrangement or admonition to us all to proceed on that basis. If we think that the matter is important, we would require a procedural change to enhance the power of the chair. I am in favour of that because, at times, our struggling along with interminable speeches—not questions and answers—undermines the cut and thrust and the import of the job that we are trying to do.

I offer that contribution because Mr Whitfield has said that this is the beginning of a process. These are some of the thoughts that I have had in the time that I have been here.

I am contributing to the debate because a large section of the line that we are discussing runs through my Eastwood constituency. I thought that I was doing quite well, with eight stations in my constituency. I now discover, however, that Stuart McMillan has 22 stations in his constituency, although quantity does not mean quality. Nonetheless, I have eight stations in my constituency, and the line runs directly through it.

It is important to consider some of the positives. First, I am delighted that the electrification of the line is a fundamental part of decarbonisation, and that it will make a significant difference to that in the years ahead. Secondly, I am grateful that, in response to representations that I made—and I make this point despite Collette Stevenson’s remarks just a moment ago—Network Rail increased capacity on the line from four carriages to six carriages during peak times. I know that constituents in Eastwood, as well as those in East Kilbride, I am sure, were happy to get a seat in the train, because many of them had found themselves standing during peak periods. The service that is on offer has definitely been enhanced.

However, the decision was made not to proceed with the dualling, from Busby, the last point of civilisation in Eastwood before one heads out towards Thorntonhall and East Kilbride. My constituency would quite happily annex Thorntonhall, were the residents there and the Boundary Commission for Scotland willing so to consider. Nonetheless, as we move through Thorntonhall to East Kilbride, we resort to a single track. I regret that, because all eight of those stations in Eastwood are historical; they were all there in the 1930s. They are all at what one would regard as one point at the north end of the constituency, not the south. Yet, the population, expansion and development of Eastwood and East Renfrewshire has massively been in a southwards direction, with virtually no public transport infrastructure at all. FirstBus has also been significantly reducing the bus services that are available there, so there is no option for many constituents, particularly those living in new housing developments, but to use their car.

I would have preferred and hoped for the dualling to continue, because I would very much like future consideration to be given to a spur from a dualled track to East Kilbride, which could swing round the back, towards the new developments in Maidenhill and up towards Whitelee wind farm, which would afford public transport access to the whole of the south side of the expanding population in Newton Mearns and Maidenhill. We should be looking to provide additional people with access through public transport options; that would be a long-term and worthwhile project. It will be almost impossible to achieve, however, if we only have a single track on the line.

I can see the minister sitting there, shrinking in shame at this development, particularly as, only a fortnight ago, the United Kingdom Government announced a £10 million investment in the Whitelee wind farm, with carbon capture, allowing for some 250 bus journeys a day to be made between Glasgow and Edinburgh on a completely decarbonised basis. The UK is investing in the future of decarbonised transport, while the minister sits there and cuts the options.