Private notice question deadlines on morning sittings
10.Currently the deadline for a member to submit a Private Notice Question (PNQ) for consideration by the Lord Speaker is 12 noon on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. On Fridays and any day when oral questions are before 1pm, such as Thursdays, the deadline for submission is 10am.
11.The deadline on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays works well. It allows the Lord Speaker’s Office time to commission briefing from government departments and then to consult the party leaders and the convenor. However, on Thursdays the 10am deadline leaves very little time for these activities. Requests for PNQs on Thursdays may arrive only 90 minutes before the PNQ would be taken on the Floor of the House.
12.We recommend that the deadline for PNQ submissions be moved from 10am to 9.30am on Thursdays, Fridays and any other day when oral questions are before 1pm.
Clocks in the Chamber and Grand Committee
13.Recently new clocks and display screens were installed in the Chamber and Grand Committee. These new clocks have a range of functions not previously available.
14.At the moment speeches in the House are timed from zero and the clocks count up. Members can only see the number of minutes they have been speaking and not the number of seconds. There is no indication when a speaking time limit has been reached or breached.
15.We believe that it would help members stick to time limits if the new clocks displayed seconds and if the time display changed colour and flashed when speaking time limits, both formal and advisory, were reached. The display of seconds will also help the Lord Speaker and the deputy speakers decide when to call on the next business if the recommendations at paragraph 4 are agreed to.
16.We recommend that from mid-June the clocks in the Chamber and Grand Committee should display seconds, that they should continue to count up from zero and that when a time limit on a speech has been reached the display should change colour and flash.