Committees could be given more time for statements

The committee has been reviewing how statements and questions are handled in the States, and held a consultation involving committees and members.

Currently general updates must be 10 minutes or less.

In the policy letter, Sacc said that members were slightly in favour of increasing this maximum to 15 minutes, so it was putting this forward.

‘It is important to note that the time allowed is the maximum length permitted, and there is no obligation to deliver a statement of that length,’ it stated in the policy letter.

There was also a suggestion of cutting the biannual updates from the principal committees to annual, but Sacc disagreed with this.

‘The committee is of the view that those committees providing such statements biannually is useful in providing members and the public with timely updates on the breadth of work being done by those committees, and to enable scrutiny of the work of committees,’ Sacc said.

‘The committee strongly supports the continuation of biannual statements by those committees and this position was supported by the majority of consultation respondents, with only two committees in favour of changing the arrangements.’

Currently, statements are usually sent to the presiding officer in advance of being presented, so they can be uploaded to the States website. It is proposed that the rules are changed to require this to happen.

During the last political term, written responses to questions included details of how much staff time had been used in responding.

This was discontinued as it had no impact on the type or quantity of questions asked.

Policy & Resources has proposed this be re-introduced, stating that it might help members think about putting in questions informally, rather than as parliamentary questions.

But Sacc was not convinced this would work and also noted that there was an administrative cost to calculating staff time. Sacc added that informal questions did not see the always see information provided to the public.

‘A key motivation for asking a parliamentary question is that the question and the response will be in the public domain by being published in the “Hansard” report,’ the policy letter stated.

The majority of States members were also against the reintroduction of the timing details.