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  1. Politics
5 June 2000

Triumph of consensus, not combat

New Statesman Scotland - Holyrood's committees are forging a new kind of politics that puts

By Mark Irvine

Scotland’s new parliament has just celebrated its first birthday and, like most infants, it had a bit of a struggle finding its feet. But the real success story has been the parliamentary committees, 16 in total, which play a crucial role in how Holyrood works. No Westminster-style all-night sittings; this is modernisation without the spin. The parliament observes daytime hours split evenly between committees and full-scale debates; the chamber cannot meet when committees are in session and vice versa.

The 16 committees shadow areas of mini-sterial responsibility, and more besides (see box). They are the engine room of a new politics, and their composition reflects Scotland’s four-party system. Committee conveners are shared out proportionately: no party has an overall majority, consensus is encouraged and minority parties get a slice of the action. As a result, the committees tend to deal with issues on merit, instead of fighting every battle on party lines. This style of work encourages parti-cipation; backbenchers are not just voting fodder, but have the job of scrutinising legislation and holding the Scottish Executive to account. The committee system makes use of their skills and divides labour efficiently. Face-to-face contact with the public is regular and routine. Committees take evidence and actively engage campaigners, who no longer have to journey to London to get their message across. Committees influence policy and monitor international developments, but they are also at the heart of the legislative process.

Uniquely, they can propose legislation and act as parliament’s quality control. Before any bill can become law, its general principles must first win the support of parliament. A committee then scrutinises every proposal and makes recommendations to parliament.

Cross-party working has produced results that would have party managers at Westminster tearing their hair out. Take, for example, the abolition of warrant sales (the sale of a debtor’s moveable goods by public auction). Abolishing warrant sales had been Labour Party policy for a hundred years, but a private member’s bill in the name of Tommy Sheridan (the leader of the Scottish Socialist Party) posed a dilemma for the Executive: it gave the impression of the tail wagging the dog. But three separate committees looked at the issue in detail, and all agreed that warrant sales had to go.

The Justice and Home Affairs Committee, along with the Local Government and Social Inclusion committees, took expert evidence from both sides of the argument and decided to support abolition on moral grounds; they also concluded that warrant sales were an inefficient way of recovering personal debts. MSPs agreed that debtors should be pursued, but that less barbaric recovery methods should be used. The compromise was to support the bill in principle, while delaying its implementation for a year, allowing time for alternatives to be put in place. Initially, the Executive rejected this hard-won cross-party consensus. But the bill survived because MSPs stood their ground, drawing strength from the strong stance of their committees. The whipping system met its match, and the Executive was forced to back down. The outcome was celebrated as a victory for common sense. In a single bound, the parliament grew in stature, both privately and publicly.

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Not everything is sweetness and light: a growing bone of contention is the disparity in resources. Committees make and mend with a clerk to help with their business, while ministers can call on a small army of civil servants to do their bidding.

Andy Kerr, a Labour loyalist, but tough-minded, too, is the convener of the Transport and Environment Committee. He has just persuaded the Executive to tighten existing planning guidelines for transmitter masts used by mobile-telephone companies. He did this with the unanimous backing of his committee and without a single vote. In presenting its recommendations to parliament, Kerr said: “The report is a vindication of the committee system, with cross-party representation, the ability to contribute views, resulting in a consensual report, without divisions but with plenty of decisions. It is yet another example of the Scottish Parliament at its best.”

John Swinney, the deputy leader of the SNP, is the convener of the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee. Swinney said: “The strength of the committee system comes from the willingness of members from all parties to consider evidence dispassionately from a variety of sources and to use this evidence to structure conclusions.” Good news for the parliament, but party managers have some sleepless nights ahead.


Scottish Parliament committees
Audit; Education, Culture and Sport; Enterprise and Lifelong Learning; Equal Opportunities; European Affairs; Finance; Health and Community Care; Local Government; Procedures; Social Inclusion, Housing and the Voluntary Sector; Justice and Home Affairs; Public Petitions; Standards; Subordinate Legislation; Transport and the Environment; and Rural Affairs

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