– in the Scottish Parliament am 5:08 pm ar 31 Hydref 2024.
Douglas Lumsden
Ceidwadwyr
5:08,
31 Hydref 2024
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. At decision time last night, Parliament was tied 62 to 62 on my colleague Alexander Burnett’s motion to annul the Local Services Franchises (Traffic Commissioner Notices and Panels) (Scotland) Regulations 2024. With Deputy Presiding Officer Liam McArthur in the chair and the other Deputy Presiding Officer voting according to her party’s whip, the Scottish National Party was already granted an artificial boost in its voting numbers, compared with what the situation would have been if you had been in the chair, Presiding Officer. I also raised an eyebrow at the exact number of SNP MSPs voting, which was one more than I had thought there would have been, considering the pairing arrangements.
That aside, the Deputy Presiding Officer cast his deciding vote against the motion to annul and stated that the reason was to protect the status quo. As Alex Cole-Hamilton pointed out in his point of order yesterday, preserving the status quo would actually have been achieved by voting in favour of the motion. That is because a negative instrument—which is still a new law—is subject to less democratic scrutiny and can only be stopped by a motion to annul it.
If the vote had been on an affirmative Scottish statutory instrument, a legislative consent motion, an Amendment at stage 3 of a bill or even the final vote on a bill, the Deputy Presiding Officer would have cast their vote against creating the new law. On this occasion, the Deputy Presiding Officer cast his vote to pass a new law and, in doing so, created a Majority in Parliament where one did not exist.
I seek your guidance as to whether parliamentary protocol was followed correctly in the chamber last night. From where I am standing, it seems as if the SNP has passed new regulations against the clear will of both the relevant committee and the Parliament, with the backing of the casting vote from the chair.
Alison Johnstone
Green
Thank you, Mr Lumsden. The Parliament was asked whether the instrument should be annulled, and it was unable to decide that matter. Therefore, the Presiding Officer in the chair cast a vote against that change. Last night’s vote means that the motion to annul fell, and it means that the negative SSI stays in place.
We will now suspend business to enable the chamber and the public gallery to clear before we move on to members’ business.
As a bill passes through Parliament, MPs and peers may suggest amendments - or changes - which they believe will improve the quality of the legislation.
Many hundreds of amendments are proposed by members to major bills as they pass through committee stage, report stage and third reading in both Houses of Parliament.
In the end only a handful of amendments will be incorporated into any bill.
The Speaker - or the chairman in the case of standing committees - has the power to select which amendments should be debated.
The term "majority" is used in two ways in Parliament. Firstly a Government cannot operate effectively unless it can command a majority in the House of Commons - a majority means winning more than 50% of the votes in a division. Should a Government fail to hold the confidence of the House, it has to hold a General Election. Secondly the term can also be used in an election, where it refers to the margin which the candidate with the most votes has over the candidate coming second. To win a seat a candidate need only have a majority of 1.
Pairing is an arrangement between two MPs of opposing parties that allows them, with the agreement of the Pairing Whips, to miss occasional votes in the House. If two Members from opposite sides of the House both agree to miss a vote, then by agreeing to differ they would cancel out each other's vote, so neither Member need turn up. MPs are generally only allowed to pair on votes that are not three-line whips.
Normally, the relationship between pairs is long-lasting and the system brings together some strange bedfellows. Labour MP Marjorie Mowlam and Conservative Cabinet minister Michael Portillo were an established `Pair' before the 1997 General Election.
It is often difficult for new MPs to find an available backbencher to pair with.
Where the government side has a large parliamentary majority, some MPs will be without a pair so, except for crucial votes (some three-line whips), a number of unpaired MPs may be allowed to be absent at specified times on a rota basis. This is known as a bisque.
