Committee
Procedures Committee, 07 Oct 2003
07 Oct 2003 · S2 · Procedures Committee
Item of business
Oral Questions
Questions are a key part of the parliamentary process, as they provide important information to the public. For that reason, I follow the committee's inquiry with the greatest of interest.While the inquiry proceeds, I must get on with handling questions. It may be helpful if I outline the principles that currently determine how questions are chosen and the process by which they are selected.In May, the parliamentary staff published guidance on questions. That document was informed by the experience and composition of the Parliament in the previous session. In this session, the Parliament is rather different. Six parties are represented on the Parliamentary Bureau and there are four independent members. We did not want wrangling in the initial weeks of the session, so I decided at the start to concentrate on fair shares—ensuring that there was proportionality across the parties and within parties. I am conscious that within parties there are minorities that in the past have not had as much of a voice as they would have liked.The extension of First Minister's question time to 30 minutes has helped that process. We now have something like proportionality across the range. Hugh Flinn, who is sitting beside me, compiles the figures week by week. Those figures suggest that in this session proportionality is greater than it was in the previous session. General questions are not proportional, but that is a matter for the parties. If every member from every party were to lodge questions every week, there would be proportionality. However, some parties are significantly better than others in lodging a run of questions week by week. That is reflected in the questions that are thrown up by the random process.The second and final point with which I want to deal is the purpose of questions. There are a number of schools of thought on that issue, and we are feeling our way as we build a new parliamentary culture.First, are questions for information or are they for advocacy—for holding the Government to account? That is a key question, because there are many other ways in which members can extract information. Those include written questions, statements and debates.Secondly, to what extent are parliamentary questions—especially FMQs—in a pecking order for party leaders, so that First Minister's question time becomes the cockpit of the week, and to what extent can back benchers get a slice of the action? When I was a member of the consultative steering group there was an almost touching belief that we would build a new culture in the Parliament in which everyone traded information freely in perfect amity. Of course, Parliaments are a bit rougher and tougher than that. In my view, it is perfectly legitimate to have a waffle answer back from a minister—that is part of the parliamentary process. It is up to the member concerned to make of that what he will.There is merit in allocating the first three questions at First Minister's question time to the party leaders, as we work in a party structure. First Minister's question time is viewed, as I have said, as the cockpit of the week. It is the period when party leaders have to identify the issues and present themselves as leaders of their parties and leaders of the nation. However, I would be uneasy about one thing. In the previous session, two degrees of proportionality were applied to FMQs. The first degree of proportionality applied to questions 1 and 2, which were judged in terms of the proportionality of Opposition parties. The remaining questions, 3 to 6, were judged in terms of the proportionality of the whole Parliament. Therefore, there was a two-tier process. I have tried to ease that situation a bit during this interim period. You will have noticed that, last week, for the first time, I called a back bencher—it was Wendy Alexander—on the back of John Swinney's question. I have consistently been trying to call back benchers to ask supplementaries on the back of Mr McLetchie's question. There is an opening there for back benchers, with the opportunity to take really topical questions at that time. I will leave you to ask questions about that later. There has to be some discretion for the Presiding Officer in the whole process. After the issues of admissibility, topicality and importance have been resolved, and after the matter of whether a question is being asked in question time as opposed to First Minister's question time has been decided, another important issue remains. We never quite know how the proportionality will work out until members' request-to-speak buttons have been pressed. We have to make instant judgments, sometimes in the space of milliseconds. A perfect example of that arose last week, when John Swinney named Wendy Alexander. I took the instant judgment that she should be called: she had been named, and should get her slot. The implication of that was that somebody else from the Labour Party, who was probably marked down to be called later, dropped off the list. It is a matter of perming variables all the time.
In the same item of business
The Convener (Iain Smith):
LD
Colleagues, welcome to this meeting of the Procedures Committee. The first item of business is oral evidence for our inquiry into question time. I am delight...
Mr George Reid (Presiding Officer):
NPA
Questions are a key part of the parliamentary process, as they provide important information to the public. For that reason, I follow the committee's inquiry...
The Convener:
LD
Thank you for that opening statement. I should have introduced Hugh Flinn, head of the chamber desk, who is accompanying you and who will be answering some q...
Mr Reid:
NPA
We are in an interim period, and we are building a new culture in the Parliament. I think that it has been helpful to split general questions from First Mini...
The Convener:
LD
Have you given any thought to the suggestion of having a thematic ministerial question time, either for the whole of question time or for part of it?
Mr Reid:
NPA
There are some difficulties with that suggestion. At present, the format of question time allows a wide spread of issues to be considered, and there will nor...
Mr Richard Baker (North East Scotland) (Lab):
Lab
I have a question about proportionality. I understand that there could be greater equity between the parties if they all submitted questions for question tim...
Mr Reid:
NPA
I would be uneasy about that. I really do not see how we could have a genuinely random selection—which we have at present—and then have the PO picking and ch...
Karen Gillon (Clydesdale) (Lab):
Lab
I am interested in the idea of proportionality among minorities within parties and what that means. How do members become a minority? Is it simply if they ar...
Mr Reid:
NPA
No. The most obvious example is the Labour back benchers who are a clearly identified group with interests, especially the women members. There are three tim...
Karen Gillon:
Lab
With all due respect, Labour back benchers are not a minority within a party: they are the majority within the Labour Party. What I am interested in is the i...
Mr Reid:
NPA
Perhaps the word should be groups. Over a four to five-year period, I would ask myself the crude question whether Labour back-bench women members had been ca...
Mark Ballard (Lothians) (Green):
Green
Talking about First Minister's question time, you said that there were two degrees of proportionality—
Mr Reid:
NPA
—in the previous Parliament.
Mark Ballard:
Green
But, effectively, there are two kinds of First Minister's question time questions. Two or three questions are asked by the leaders of the Opposition parties,...
Mr Reid:
NPA
There is a certain accordancy in having diary questions at the beginning of First Minister's question time. There is real merit in diary questions if it is a...
The Convener:
LD
Does Bruce Crawford have a supplementary question?
Bruce Crawford (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP):
SNP
The Presiding Officer has just answered the supplementary that I would have asked about whether we could squeeze out the two diary questions and just go stra...
Mr Baker:
Lab
My question is on proportionality in First Minister's question time. In his written evidence to us, Dennis Canavan said:"Party leaders almost invariably take...
Mr Reid:
NPA
There is certainly a much better balance now than there was beforehand, when there was no balance. I am not at all sure that party leaders take up half of Fi...
Hugh Flinn (Scottish Parliament Directorate of Clerking and Reporting):
I think that the proportion would be half only if we included back-bench supplementaries that are taken after the David McLetchie or John Swinney questions.
Mr Reid:
NPA
I have given my answer to that. The really significant development in this parliamentary session is the fact that I regularly choose a couple of supplementar...
Karen Gillon:
Lab
I am interested in why there is a general rule that there are supplementaries on the back of David McLetchie's questions but none on the back of John Swinney...
Mr Reid:
NPA
I have given the example of a question that was called on the back of John Swinney's question, but that was specific to the circumstances and the answers bei...
The Convener:
LD
Before we move on to general oral questions, I want to ask the Presiding Officer quickly while he is here whether any changes need to be made within the half...
Mr Reid:
NPA
At times, I become uneasy about whether there will be enough meat in question 6. I try to get to question 6 by about 24 or 25 minutes into the half hour, but...
Mr Jamie McGrigor (Highlands and Islands) (Con):
Con
My question is on the possibility of having a ministerial question time as a separate entity from the two existing question times. I am bearing in mind the f...
Mr Reid:
NPA
I touched on this issue in an earlier answer. The fact that there are 10 departments gives rise to the questions that I identified earlier. Who would be call...
Mr McGrigor:
Con
I believe that a ministerial question time has now been introduced at Westminster and seems to work well. I take your point that it might be wrong to have qu...
Mr Reid:
NPA
I do not know. I would like the committee to address the issue, because I do not know how much popular demand there is for such an approach. It has not come ...