E Tabling Of Parliamentary Questions For Written Answer

On 13 October 2011 the House agreed to a 3-month experiment with restrictions on the number of questions which could be tabled electronically on any one day and an earlier deadline for their submission. The Table Office has provided the Committee with a memorandum assessing the impact of those changes, and recommending that the experiment be made permanent. The Committee, therefore agree with the Table Office's conclusions and recommend that the restrictions on e-tabling which have been piloted should continue. The Committee also recommends that the consequent upgrade to the e-tabling system include improvements such as the introduction of a basket in which to keep PQs prior to their submission, if and when they prove technically feasible.

On 13 October 2011 the House agreed to a 3-month experiment with restrictions on the number of questions which could be tabled electronically on any one day and an earlier deadline for their submission. The Table Office has provided us with a memorandum assessing the impact of those changes, and recommending that the experiment be made permanent.

This report builds on work undertaken in the previous Parliament. It contains three sets of recommendations which share a common aim of improving the effectiveness of parliamentary scrutiny. Firstly the Committee recommends that select committees be allowed to table in their own amendments to bills and motions on the floor of the House. Secondly it is recommended that during this Parliament Members and opposition spokespeople be encouraged to table explanatory statements on amendments to bills and that the Government use this facility to provide explanatory statements to clarify the origin of amendments and new clauses proposed on report. Thirdly the Committee recognises that whilst written parliamentary questions are a vital part of parliamentary scrutiny, there is a danger that their value is being eroded by the record numbers being tabled which also imposes significant costs on the public purse. The Committee therefore proposes a three month trial of applying a daily quota of five and an earlier deadline of 6.30 pm from Monday to Thursday and 2.30 pm on sitting Fridays to questions for written answer submitted electronically. They also recommend that, to assist Members, the Government deliver all answers to parliamentary questions to the Member concerned by email at the same time as the answer is delivered to the House

This reference book is primarily a procedural work which examines the many forms, customs, and practices which have been developed and established for the House of Commons since Confederation in 1867. It provides a distinctive Canadian perspective in describing procedure in the House up to the end of the first session of the 36th Parliament in Sept. 1999. The material is presented with full commentary on the historical circumstances which have shaped the current approach to parliamentary business. Key Speaker's rulings and statements are also documented and the considerable body of practice, interpretation, and precedents unique to the Canadian House of Commons is amply illustrated. Chapters of the book cover the following: parliamentary institutions; parliaments and ministries; privileges and immunities; the House and its Members; parliamentary procedure; the physical & administrative setting; the Speaker & other presiding officers; the parliamentary cycle; sittings of the House; the daily program; oral & written questions; the process of debate; rules of order & decorum; the curtailment of debate; special debates; the legislative process; delegated legislation; financial procedures; committees of the whole House; committees; private Members' business; public petitions; private bills practice; and the parliamentary record. Includes index.

Programme motions are used in the House of Commons to determine the amount of time spent considering legislation. The effective use of programming meets the Government's need to manage the legislative timetable whilst ensuring sufficient opportunity is available for Parliament to scrutinise legislation. However, the inquiry found that the way programming is currently managed means that there is often insufficient time to consider all of the amendments tabled at Report stage. Consequently many measures pass into law without any scrutiny at all. The Report makes a series of recommendations: Government should make greater use of recommittal procedures-sending all or part of a bill back to Committee- when large numbers of Government amendments have been tabled, to ensure they receive sufficient scrutiny; a revised procedure for the tabling of supplementary programme motions which would adjust the way scheduling of debate is carried out in advance; ensure that the House has the opportunity, where appropriate, to vote on alternative, non-Government, propositions for the timetabling of legislation and on consideration of Lords Amendments

An examination, in historical context, of the approach the UK Parliament has taken towards the Internet, and its wider implications.

This report follows the Committee's report of September 2013 on private Members' bills. Since then they have received a Government response, which is published as an appendix to this report, and discussed recommendations further with the Leader of the House. This report sets out a revised package of recommendations for reform of the private Member's bill process. The revised proposals include that: the House should agree to a convention that the question on second reading of a private Member's bill should be put to the House at the end of a full day's debate, in the same way that the House expects the question to be put on second reading of a Government bill; Bills which have not been published should be clearly identified in the Future Business section of the Order Paper; Pages should be provided on the Parliamentary website where draft private Members' bills can be made available online for scrutiny and comment which should be done on a pilot basis in the 2014-15 session; a bill need not be brought in immediately after leave is granted under the ten minute rule; the risk of a single Member monopolising the limited opportunities for debate of private Members' bills should be reduced by providing that a private Member may present no more than one bill on any one day; the deadline for publishing a private Member's bill should be brought forward to the Wednesday of the week prior to the day of second reading; Private Members' bills should be called "backbench bills"

In October 2010 the Committee in response to a report by its predecessor committee began a trial exercise in monitoring unsatisfactory and late answers to written Parliamentary questions. With just over 50 complaints from Members in response to the exercise of which half were followed up. This resulted in answers for Members on a number of occasions in circumstances where they would otherwise have found difficult or impossible to follow up on an inadequate response. The exercise will now come to an end and be put on a more permanent footing.In consideration of a memorandum from the Leader of the House providing statistics on the time taken to respond to WPQs in 2010-12, the committee has sought explanations from Ministers in charge of poorly performing departments for the level of performance in the memorandum and what steps are being taken to improve these levels. The Department for Education had a particularly poor performance and evidence was taken from the Parliamentary Under Secretary and a senior official in the Department which the Committee found unsatisfactory with and so a follow up session with the Permanent Secretary and Secretary of State was undertaken. The Committee will continue its interest in the answering performance of this Department and hold it to further account should its performance not improve markedly.