| SECTION
3.4: |
| ACCOUNTABILITY |
| Introduction |
| 1. One of
our key principles relates to accountability and we
believe that much of the work of the Parliament will
focus on scrutinising the Scottish Executive in
exercising its functions. This section considers the
various ways in which the Parliament and individual MSPs
might hold the Scottish Executive to account. The
question of accountability of members is considered in section
3.2 (on members). |
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| Holding the Executive to Account : the
Full Parliament
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| Annual Report and Budget |
| 2. The
Scottish Executive will be expected to announce its
forward legislative programme for the Parliamentary
session soon after each general election. This
announcement, which would be detailed in respect of the
forthcoming year and more aspirational in respect of the
following years, should be subject to a debate in the
Plenary. In addition we recommend that the Executive
should be able to come forward during a session with a
revised programme should it need to respond to a change
in circumstances. Standing Orders should also require the
Executive to inform the Parliament annually of its
planned timetable for legislation. |
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| 3. It is
important that the statements made by the Executive
should go wider than simply referring to the Executive's
legislative proposals. In an annual statement to the
Parliament, the Executive should be required to outline
its main aims, objectives and policy priorities, and the
various means, administrative, Executive, legislative, by
which it intends to achieve them. If possible, this might
look beyond one year, but could be updated annually. The
statement might take the form of an annual report,
reporting on progress made in the previous year, changes
in approaches etc. Thus it would include an element of
performance review, and appropriate performance
indicators would need to be set. |
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| 4. It is
proposed that any such statement from the Executive
should be the subject of a debate in Plenary session on a
motion to approve the programme. This motion would be
open to amendment. The length of such a debate should be
a matter for the Parliament to decide. |
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| 5. A similar
annual statement should be made in respect of the
Executive's financial proposals, also subject to debate
in Plenary, although this would be a separate event.
Again this would be debated on a motion to approve the
statement, which would be open to amendment. |
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| General Debates |
| 6. It is
assumed that the Parliament will wish to hold debates
from time to time on matters of public policy, during
which the Executive will be expected to set out and
defend its policy position. Some such debates may be
initiated by the Executive, others by non-Executive
parties, by Committees or by a specified minimum number
of Members. The Business Committee would be involved in
programming such debates but we recommend that the
Standing Orders should provide for some guarantee for a
minimum amount of time to non-Executive parties and
Committees (see section 3.3). |
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| Ministerial Statements |
| 7. Standing
Orders should provide for the First Minister and the
Scottish Ministers to make special Ministerial Statements
to the Parliament on matters of public interest. Such
statements would be made early in the day's business and
should be followed by a short debate. The debate might be
either subject to a time limit or could be added to the
end of the day's business (to avoid programmed business
being disrupted too much). We considered whether
Ministers should be forced to make a statement on a
particular issue of public interest, perhaps following a
request from a minimum number of MSPs, but concluded that
the "Emergency" Question (see below) would
achieve the same effect. |
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| Votes of No Confidence |
| 8. Any
Member should be able to present a motion for a vote of
no confidence either in the entire Executive or in a
named Minister, which must be debated and voted upon
provided they have the support of a specified minimum
number of at least 26 MSPs. Any such motion would be both
debatable and amendable. It is stipulated in the Scotland
Act that the First Minister must tender his/her
resignation and the Scottish Ministers and Junior
Scottish Ministers must resign if the Executive no longer
enjoys the confidence of the Parliament. However, should
the Parliament pass a motion of no confidence in a named
Minister, this would not automatically lead to the
resignation of the Minister concerned. |
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| Holding the Executive to Account :
Committees |
| 9. Under our
recommendations, Committees should be able to scrutinise
the activities of the Executive in a number of ways: for
example, they should have the power to conduct enquiries
and to take oral and written evidence from Ministers,
Civil Servants and others. In addition to these methods,
the paragraphs below propose a number of other mechanisms
which Committees may adopt in order to scrutinise the
Executive. |
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| Role of Committees in the Policy
Development and Pre-Legislative Processes |
| 10. The
policy development, pre-legislative process is described
fully in section 3.5. Paragraph 2 above proposes that the
Executive should be required to make an annual report to
the Parliament which should be the subject of a debate in
Plenary. In addition to this, we propose that individual
Ministers should be invited to address the relevant
subject Committees on the detail of the relevant parts of
the Executive's proposals, perhaps outlining in more
detail their aims and objectives; their plans for taking
things forward; the main thrust of any proposed
legislation; and the consultation which the Executive
plans to undertake. This would provide Committees with a
valuable opportunity to influence the development of
policy at the very earliest stages and would also inform
the Executive again at an early stage of any reservations
or concerns the Committee was likely to have on a
particular issue. |
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| 11. The role
of Committees in terms of scrutinising the Executive's
financial proposals and in considering EU policy, and
draft European Union legislation, is considered in the
attached Appendix and in paragraphs 28-32 below. |
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| "Taking Stock" Meetings |
| 12. The
Standing Orders of the Catalonian Parliament make
provision for Government Ministers to attend "Taking
Stock" Meetings in Committees. These meetings may
take place either at the request of the Minister or at
the request of the Committee. Such meetings provide an
opportunity for Government Ministers to update Committees
on the general progress and performance of their Ministry
and are in the main for information only. We believe that
such stock-taking meetings might be useful, and would not
require specific provision in Standing Orders. If either
a Committee or a Minister felt that such a meeting would
be useful, it is unlikely that the other would disagree,
subject to agreement as to timing. This should be left to
the Parliament to develop. |
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| Holding the Executive to Account :
Individual MSPs
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| 13. Oral and
written Parliamentary Questions (PQs) will provide an
important means for individual Members to obtain
information from the Executive and to hold the Executive
to account. The time provided in Plenary for
Parliamentary Questions should not be used for political
points scoring. PQs should be used genuinely to elicit
information. The paragraphs below consider the detail of
how Parliamentary Questions might be submitted, selected
and answered. |
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| Arrangements for Submitting Written PQs |
| 14. The
detail of the arrangements for submitting written
Parliamentary Questions differs slightly from country to
country across Europe. However, almost all Standing
Orders on this issue contain the following : |
| 14.1
a general provision stating that questions must be as
brief as possible and must not contain offensive
language; 14.2 a
designated person/office to whom/which questions must be
officially submitted;
14.3 a time limit by which
written answers must be provided; and
14.4 a provision requiring
all questions and answers to be recorded in a
Parliamentary publication.
|
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| 15. We
recommend that the Scottish Parliament's Standing Orders
on this matter contain, as a minimum, all four of these
elements. |
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| 16. We
considered whether questions should be accepted only if
they relate to matters for which the Executive is
responsible, or whether any questions should be
allowable, with the form of answer remaining at the
discretion of the Executive. On the one hand, limiting
questions to those concerning matters for which the
Scottish Executive is responsible would reduce the volume
of questions being asked, and avoid wasting the
Parliament's and Executive's time answering questions
which were not within the Executive's responsibility. On
the other hand, it would be open to Members to phrase
questions in such a way as to make them acceptable. For
example, a question such as "What is the Scottish
Executive's policy in respect of the situation in
Afghanistan?", would not be accepted or relevant.
However, "When was the last time the First Minister
discussed the situation in Afghanistan with a Member of
the UK Government?" might be. If Ministers
consistently replied to such questions with "this is
a matter for the UK Government... ", it is hoped
that MSPs would learn through experience what matters
were worth pursuing by the PQ mechanism and which should
be pursued by other means. However, some guidance to
Clerks on the acceptability of questions would be
essential to assist the smooth processing of business. |
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| 17. The
Scottish Parliament will almost certainly have some form
of Parliamentary Office which will fulfil the functions
carried out by a number of offices at Westminster,
including the Table Office. It is proposed therefore that
all Parliamentary Questions are submitted to this office.
Once questions have been submitted it would be for the
Clerks to advise on whether questions were in the correct
format etc. and to ensure that both questions and answers
were printed in the appropriate Parliamentary
publication. |
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| 18. We
suggest that PQs should be addressed in the first
instance to the Scottish Ministers and it would be for
the First Minister to allocate questions to particular
Ministers for reply. Where information was readily
available in the public domain, members should be able to
address questions seeking such information to the
Parliament's Information Centre. |
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| 19. We
considered whether Standing Orders should go beyond that
suggested above and include more detailed provision, for
example to disallow questions to which answers have been
given in the last 3-6 months (in Westminster the period
is 12 months), to allow questions not answered within a
set time limit to then be raised orally and to allow
Ministers to choose to answer orally a question which
would ordinarily require to be answered in writing. We
can see arguments in favour of prescribing such rules in
the initial Standing Orders. Alternatively, such matters
could be left to develop through convention. |
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| Arrangements for Submitting Oral PQs |
| 20. Notice
of Parliamentary Questions for oral answer should be
submitted to the relevant office in the same way as
written questions but that the questioner must indicate
that the question is for oral rather than written answer.
It is envisaged that appropriate templates would be
provided. Five working days notice would be required to
be given prior to an oral question being raised in the
Chamber. Provision should be made for Members to submit
questions electronically. All questions should be
typewritten. |
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| Allocation of Days and Time for Oral PQs |
| 21. The
allocation of days and time for oral PQs will, to a large
extent, depend on the sitting pattern which the
Parliament chooses to adopt. However, based on the
sitting pattern proposed in section 3.3, it is suggested
that a regular weekly Question Time could be scheduled as
the first item of business following lunch on a Thursday
afternoon, lasting perhaps for 20 minutes to half an
hour. This would ensure that a large number of Members
were present for the start of the afternoon Plenary
session. |
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| 22. There
are also a number of detailed issues to take into
account. We propose that the order of the questions to be
asked on a particular day should be determined by random
selection by computer. Questions which are not reached
during a particular session should be given a written
answer. We considered what provision should be made in
relation to supplementary questions ie should a maximum
number of supplementary questions be permitted, should
the number of supplementaries and the number of times a
Member can speak be limited. We concluded that this
should be left to the discretion of the Presiding
Officer, bearing in mind the overall time limit for
questions. |
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| 23. We
propose that each Oral Question Time should cover all
members of the Scottish Executive rather than having a
rota of questions on specific Ministerial portfolios.
This would ensure that questions on topical issues could
be pursued. |
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| Arrangements for "Emergency"
Oral PQs |
| 24. In the
House of Commons any Member may submit an
"Emergency" oral PQ or Private Notice Question
(PNQ). These questions usually relate to matters of
public importance and must be submitted before 12 noon.
The Speaker then decides whether the question should be
debated on the floor of the House that afternoon. If so,
Members are notified that a debate will take place. |
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| 25. We
considered the level of provision which should be
included in the Scottish Parliament's Standing Orders in
relation to this issue. In particular we considered
whether all Members, or a minimum number of Members,
should be able to submit such a question, whether it
should be for the Business Committee or the Presiding
Officer to take a decision on which questions will be
allowed and whether a time limit should be imposed on the
discussion of the question. We concluded that it should
be for the Presiding Officer to decide whether such
questions should be allowed as s/he would be expected to
act with impartiality. |
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| Adjournment Type Debates |
| 26. We
propose in section 3.3 that time should be set aside
following voting on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons for
non-Executive business similar to Westminster's
Adjournment debates. This would provide individual
Members with an additional opportunity to question the
Executive on mainly constituency related business. |
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| Financial Issues |
| 27. The
Scotland Act requires the Scottish Parliament to make
rules covering the preparation of its accounts,
procedures for independent audit and arrangements for the
submission of reports to the Parliament. In addition the
Parliament needs procedures for approving expenditure for
using the tax varying power, for overseeing the work of
the auditors and for scrutinising the outputs obtained
from the expenditure required to be considered. We
endorse the recommendations of the Financial Issues
Advisory Group, a summary of which is set out in Annex I. |
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| European Issues |
| Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals |
| 28. The
Scottish Parliament will be able to scrutinise all EU
documentation deposited at Westminster, to ensure that
Scotland's interests are properly taken into account in
the development of the UK line. The volume of documents
lodged is considerable (Westminster typically deals with
around 800 separate documents per annum). It is therefore
unlikely that the Scottish Parliament will be able to
consider all of them in equal detail, notwithstanding the
time constraints mentioned above. |
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| 29. It is
thus essential that scrutiny procedures are able
effectively to sift documents, to identify which are of
most interest to Scotland and to identify those where the
Parliament's influence can best be brought to bear
(recognising that in practice the scrutiny process gives
limited influence in a process which also involves
Council of Ministers meetings, officials' working groups
and the European Parliament). |
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| 30. We
recommend: |
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| 30.1 the
Parliament should establish a separate European Committee
whose membership should be drawn from members of other
relevant Committees (eg covering agriculture, fisheries,
the environment, transport) (see section 3.2); |
| 30.2
Membership of the Committee will necessarily be limited.
However, any Member of the Parliament should be able to
speak at Committee meetings, though they would not count
towards the quorum, make formal proposals or vote; |
| 30.3 the
Committee should have 2 main roles: firstly to act as a
sifting mechanism on EU documents and other material; and
secondly to debate issues which either do not fall to any
subject Committee, or which fall to several and where it
would be helpful to hold a single debate. Furthermore,
the Committee should be prepared to take a proactive role
in the development of key areas of EU policy; |
| 30.4. in
assessing subjects for debate, the Committee should take
into account, inter alia: the importance to
Scotland of the issue involved, the relative importance
of Scottish activity to the UK as a whole or to the EU;
the time available for debate before the relevant Council
of Ministers takes place, the time available for debate
before the UK view is formulated; and more generally the
political importance or sensitivity of the subject; |
| 30.5 initial
sifting recommendations should be made by the Committee
Convener and reporters. The final decision on what action
if any to take on these items (eg referral to the subject
Committee, debate in Plenary, or further enquiry within
the European Committee) should be made by the Committee
as a whole; |
| 30.6 each
Committee member should be provided with access to the
full list of documents deposited and this should also be
made available to all members. Any Committee member
should be able to request further information on an item,
or to propose that it be debated at the Committee to
assess whether further action need be taken on it; |
| 30.7 the
Committee should call for evidence from officials and
Ministers of the Executive, from interest groups in
Scotland and from other parties, including inviting
evidence from the European Commission. Such evidence
could take the form of written submissions or personal
evidence, as appropriate. |
| 30.8 the
Committee should be able to sit in wider forum, or take
advice from specialist advisory groups, where it was
helpful for evidence from a variety of invitees to be
considered simultaneously; and |
| 30.9 the
Committee should develop close links with its
counter-parts in Westminster, Cardiff and Belfast. |
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| Implementation of EU Legislation |
| 31. In
relation to the implementation of EU legislation, where
responsibility falls to the Scottish Executive, the
Parliament and its Committees will have an essential role
in assessing modes of implementation and their success
once they are in place. However, it is likely that much
of the assessment of implementation arrangements will
fall to individual subject Committees, rather than
primarily to the European Committee. The latter may,
however, wish to retain a broad overview of how
successfully the Executive was implementing EU
requirements. |
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| Pre- and Post-Council Briefings |
| 32. We
recommend that the Business Committee should have the
flexibility to decide in conjunction with the European
Committee, whether a debate prior to a Council meeting
was necessary or relevant. We believe that some form of
post-Council feedback, to the Plenary or relevant
Committee, should be the norm. |
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| Links with Europe |
| 33. We
recommend that the Parliament should consider
establishing links with other devolved Parliaments in
Europe and with the European Parliament, to consider
areas of common interest. In particular the Parliament
should consider establishing links between MSPs and
Scottish Members of the European Parliament, together
with Scottish representatives in other relevant European
bodies, to facilitate the exchange of information and
views on European Union issues affecting Scotland. |
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| Summary of Recommendations of
Standing Orders |
| Standing Orders should provide that: |
| |
- an annual policy
statement from the Executive should be the
subject of a debate in Plenary session on a
motion to approve the programme, which motion
would be open to amendment. The length of such a
debate should be a matter for the Parliament to
decide.
- there should be a
similar annual statement and debate in respect of
the Executive's financial proposals.
- the First Minister
and the Scottish Ministers should be able to make
special Ministerial Statements to the Parliament
on matters of public interest.
- in respect of
Parliamentary Questions the Standing Orders
provisions should include:
- a general provision
stating that questions must be as brief as
possible and must not contain offensive language;
- a designated
person/office to whom/which questions must be
officially submitted;
- a time limit by which
written answers must be provided; and
- a provision requiring
all questions and answers to be recorded in a
Parliamentary publication.
- PQs should be
addressed in the first instance to the Scottish
Ministers.
- notice of
Parliamentary Questions for oral answer should be
submitted to the relevant office as should
written questions but that the questioner must
indicate that the question is for oral rather
than written answer. Five working days notice
should be required.
- there should be a
regular weekly Question Time following lunch on a
Thursday afternoon.
- the order of the
questions to be asked on a particular day should
be determined by random selection by computer.
Questions which are not reached during a
particular session should be given a written
answer.
- each Oral Question
Time should cover all members of the Scottish
Executive rather than having a rota of questions
on specific Ministerial portfolios.
- there should be
provision for emergency PQs.
|
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| Our detailed
recommendations on financial issues are set out in the
attached Annex I. |
