Examination of Witnesses (Questions 276-279)
MS HELEN
IRWIN, MR
ROGER PHILLIPS
AND MS
JANET HUNTER
TUESDAY 21 MAY 2002
Chairman
276. Can I welcome our witnesses to this meeting
of the Procedure Committee, particularly Helen Irwin, whom I know
very well, the Principal Clerk, Roger Phillips, the Deputy Principal
Clerk, and again I think most of us know him well as we have come
across him and all the help and advice that he can give in the
Table Office, and also Janet Hunter, who is based in the Upper
Table Office and, am I right to say to colleagues on the Committee,
an expert on statistics?
(Ms Hunter) Not quite an expert but I produced the
statistics that the Committee should have.
277. Then you are an expert on statistics. You
know the purpose of our inquiry. This Committee and the House
consider it to be a very important inquiry. I hope in a way it
will be a watershed for change where parliamentary questions are
concerned. There have been considerable expressions of concern
about the current question process and we are therefore looking
at it to see how it can best be changed. I therefore start with
the first question following on from what I have just said because
there is a very strong desire in the House for more topical questioning.
It has been suggested that the minimum period of notice for oral
questions should be considerably reduced from the present rule.
What would be the practical implications both for Members, from
your point of view, and for the Table Office and its staff of
reducing the notice period to five or three or two sitting days?
Which of these periods would in your view be most advantageous
and what would be the effect on the timing of the cut-off and
the shuffle?
(Ms Irwin) The beauty of the present system is that
Members know with great clarity what day they are tabling for,
except round about the times of recess when the system is adjusted,
so that on a Monday Members are tabling questions for Monday week.
If one reduced the notice day period to five days that would remain
the case, that on Monday Members would be tabling for the subsequent
Monday. That makes the whole system straightforward and easy to
understand. Reducing to two days is broadly the present minimum
notice period and also the minimum notice period for named-day
questions. The problem with that is that it produces an irregular
pattern. Under the Standing Order notice of a question must appear
on the notice paper at least two days in advance of the day the
question is to be answered. That means that you table a named-day
question on a Monday for a Thursday, Tuesday for Friday, Wednesday
for Monday, Thursday for Tuesday and Friday for Wednesday. The
last point immediately makes it clear that this might cause some
problems if that period of notice was adopted because for Members
to have to table their questions to the Prime Minister on a Friday
for the subsequent Wednesday would probably not meet the needs
of the House. Generally the system would be a bit difficult to
work out. Members would have to come and check at the Office,
albeit that the annunciator gives some information to Members.
Three days would not make much difference. One would have the
same sorts of uncertainties and unpredictabilities. We in the
Table Office can operate any system. It is simply a question of
a rota and if there is a rule we will adjust all the notices around
the place and things will not be difficult. If one comes back
to the notice period, say, for Prime Minister's Questions as an
example, and if one takes it that tabling on a Friday for the
subsequent Wednesday would be inconvenient, the question then
is, would tabling on Monday for answer on a Wednesday be too short
notice? Again, for PMs that might not be a problem but for, let
us say, International Development, which also answers on a Wednesday,
where Members table substantive questions, some of which might
need quite a lot of work doing, the question is, would tabling
on Monday give a department sufficient notice? That leads me into
thinking about not so much the notice period itself but the notice
for departments and the civil servants who have to do the briefing
work. At the moment, as you know, the shuffle is at 6.30. It was
originally at four for many years and after the last big Procedure
Committee investigation it moved to five. You recommended not
very long ago that it move to 6.30 and the Speaker authorised
that as an experiment. To do the shuffle, and Janet will correct
me if I am wrong, means about an hour's work for a complicated
day, a bit less for a straightforward day where there is only
one department. We would not be in a position to advise departments
about the Questions tabled which had been successful in the shuffle
until the middle of the evening if the shuffle is at 6.30. That,
I think, might not be very convenient for departments because
I imagine the civil servants doing the drafting might be sitting
around in their offices waiting for us. I would envisage, if we
had a very short period of notice, that instead of, as at present,
giving departments the questions simply when they appear on the
blue notices next morning, we would in the Office type up a list
and get it faxed or e-mailed to the department so that they had
a little bit more notice than the printing process allows. In
order to give them any fair period of notice one might have to
think, if one went to a minimum of two days, or even three, of
bringing the time of the shuffle earlier. If the shuffle is earlier
that might not be convenient for Members. The reason the time
of the shuffle was extended to five and then 6.30 was to meet
the convenience of Members who might not be in the House earlier.
One then has to think, is there perhaps a more radical, slightly
different approach to this? One which I think the Scots follow,
and I know the Committee has visited Scotland, is that Members
may table questions on a day earlier than the day on which the
shuffle takes place.
278. You are almost anticipating the question
I was about to ask you because at present the maximum amount of
notice for tabling orals is in practice the same as the minimum,
ie, ten parliamentary sitting days. The idea of decoupling the
two and allowing a maximum period of four weeks to some people
seems attractive. What is your view of this proposal and how much
of an extra burden would this place on your office, albeit the
longer before the day that the question is answered that you table
it, clearly the less topical it may become, but if it is a question
which is merely seeking information, then quite clearly Government
departments are going to be able to have details of the question
very much in advance which is rather different and more beneficial
in fact than the current situation. How does that fit in with
the answer that you have just given?
(Ms Irwin) Two things. I was not intending to suggest,
when I suggested Members give notice on days earlier than the
shuffle, that those notices would necessarily be printed earlier
and transmitted to departments earlier because, as you know, we
only pull out of the shuffle the top successful questions at the
end of a random ballot. Departments would gain nothing and would
acquire an awful lot of questions that were never going to be
used if we were to send them questions submitted to the office
in advance of the day of the shuffle. I think that would probably
be counter-productive.
279. Albeit it would be merely returning, would
it not, to the situation which used to apply when every question
that was tabled was printed, and if it did not get an oral answer
with a supplementary it would be answered as a written question?
(Ms Irwin) Yes, that is quite correct, Mr Chairman.
I think probably all Members will have noticed that there is really
quite a big difference between the types of questions Members
table for oral answer and questions they table for written answer,
and although—and I think I said this in my paper to you—the
same rules apply to questions, in reality a lot of the questions
that are put down for oral answer are a peg on which to hang subsequent
supplementaries. I would doubt whether many Members actually wanted
answers in writing to them. I think one of the motives behind
the change some years ago to stop printing all the questions and
only print the top ones in the shuffle was in order to reduce
wasted effort all round in giving Members answers to questions
they did not particularly want the answers to and, by so doing,
occasioning a lot of extra work in departments. It might be counter-productive.
I think the Leader of the House, when he gave evidence to you,
suggested a sort of quid pro quo for reducing the notice
period for questions, which was that there might be even fewer
questions pulled out of the shuffle because it is unusual for
question number 30 to be reached, so why have the civil servants
going to a lot of effort to answer a question which is not going
to be reached?
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