Good afternoon, and welcome to the Procedure Committee. This afternoon, we are having our first evidence session on the call lists inquiry. The practice of publishing call lists, or speakers’ lists, is common in many legislatures around the world as a way of governing parliamentary business, and it was practised in the House of Commons during the covid-19 pandemic as a way of regulating business in the Chamber. In this inquiry, we are looking at the potential merits and pitfalls of introducing call lists for public debates in the House of Commons. To help us with our inquiry, we are joined today by representatives of smaller parties to hear their views on call lists: Dr Ellie Chowns, Claire Hanna and Robin Swann. Good afternoon to you all. Before we begin, please would you introduce yourselves formally for the record, starting with Dr Chowns?

I am Ellie Chowns, Green party MP for North Herefordshire and the leader of the Green parliamentary group.

I am Claire Hanna, MP for South Belfast and Mid Down, and leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party.

I am Robin Swann MP, Ulster Unionist MP for South Antrim and leader of the Ulster Unionist party delegation. There is only me.

A competitive election. Thank you so much for your time. As is traditional, I have the first question as Chair. Could you begin by briefly outlining your views on the introduction of publishing call lists, perhaps starting with Ellie?

The Green party and I are strongly in favour of the introduction of call lists. We think it would significantly improve the transparency and efficiency of parliamentary business, particularly for smaller groups like us. We have, as individuals, experienced the challenges, with each of us covering at least half a dozen portfolios and juggling very significant demands on our time to be in different places at different times. We are frequently called quite low down the list, particularly during long debates, so the current way of organising parliamentary business, in which there is not a huge amount of transparency and predictability, particularly impacts on small groups. Perhaps later we will be able to speak about our experience of alternatives that worked better in councils and the European Parliament.

I assure you there will be an opportunity to go into that. I know you all have experience of other legislatures, so that will be covered. Claire, as a smaller party, what are your thoughts around call lists?

We obviously respect and uphold the primacy of the Chamber as a central part of your duties, but it is important that we respond to the Parliament and the politics that we are actually operating in, and not an idealised version of what parliamentary debate is. When people talk about the interruptions that call lists would provide, we are thinking of a Westminster in the ’50s, or a time when there were not the same number of time pressures on Members. As Ellie outlined, with a smaller party, you are covering a lot of bases. Like Robin, I am the Front Bench spokesperson on everything, which means I am trying to service those various demands. If you go in to speak on a standard debate of maybe three or four hours, as a smaller party coming down the pecking order, you really need to commit those four hours. It is a disincentive to speak. Unless it is absolutely fundamental to you—or, in my case, is on legislation specifically about Northern Ireland or the island of Ireland—you unfortunately cannot commit the time, or you cannot put anything else into your diary for that day. That encourages you to just do interventions, which means a loss in the quality of debate—something we are all trying to uphold.

I come from the other end. I would be opposed to introducing a call list because it would manufacture an expectation of when people will speak, and it would move the Chamber away from being a debating chamber and towards being a public speaking chamber. It is common that, as smaller parties, we are always at the end of the debate. That is the place I see my party as being in, because I am a single MP from a single party, so that is where I see our place in that. Speaking in the Chamber is a privilege; it is not a right. Introducing call lists would give Whips the ability to manage who speaks, when they speak, how long they speak and what they speak on. It takes away from the freedom of some of the democratic speaking rights that we enjoy as MPs in the Chamber. There are other alternatives that we have looked at that I am happy to talk about later on.

With 650 MPs, we all have very different circumstances. I want to ask all three of you whether call lists would be beneficial or problematic for MPs, based on things such as caring responsibilities or geography. Obviously, some MPs have constituencies 10 minutes up a tube line, while some MPs have constituencies much further away. How do you think call lists would impact in terms of geography and things such as caring responsibilities? Let’s go the other way, starting with Robin this time.

I suppose, as a Northern Ireland MP who can get here only by plane, the times that the Chamber is now sitting—half 2 to 10 pm on a Monday, and so forth—actually manages that and manages the expectation on when you are meant to be here, rather than having debates running into the middle of the morning or early night. There are already procedures in place that counter that, and I do not see how having a call list would mitigate that, because you are looking at who speaks when, rather than the length of the debate or the operability of the Chamber, which is already set.

Impacts on, say, caring responsibilities probably pertain more to London-based MPs; if you have travelled by plane, when you are here, you are here. You are not getting home for bedtime or any of that stuff. As Robin said, there are some protections and provisions around time to make that work. It is a fact that, for example—this is not about call lists—if there is a vote at 7 pm on a Wednesday, you cannot get back to Belfast, but if it was at 6.45 pm, you could. There are some hard cut-off points, which make it more difficult to operate family life around them. I suppose it is about the predictability of knowing that you can speak in a debate and make a flight, because on a number of occasions you have to not get a flight and book a hotel for that night if it runs a little bit later. I suppose it is about the equality of arms with other parties that know they can get in and out of a debate a little bit earlier.

I think that call lists could be really helpful for people with caring responsibilities and for people with other protected characteristics. The transparency and clarity about speaking time and speaking order would be very helpful for many people with different circumstances, whether that is demands on their time or accessibility requirements. I would like to see—I believe it is perfectly possible to have—a system in which there is a call list and some flexibility, so that the Speaker would have the ability to insert people into the order if there were a need for that in a particular short notice circumstance. I am also strongly committed to continuing the tradition of debate and back-and-forth—in fact, I would like to see more of it. I think all this could help with that. The tradition of asking somebody to give way could be coupled with encouraging some people who use that very frequently to use it less frequently to leave more space for other people to contribute more. Also, you could envisage a system in which there was a proportion of debate time that was allocated according to a call list, which has a mechanism that recognises party group size. There would be an initial contribution in order of party group size, and then a freer debate with the ability for anybody and everybody to stand forward or ask for time. I think you could have a hybrid system in which call lists were a core part of the tradition of debate and would provide the clarity and transparency that would aid people with particular circumstances, while at the same time retaining a degree of back-and-forth and flexibility.

We have had evidence already reminding us about the call lists we had during covid. Those of us in the room who remember the call lists we had were reminded that even people on them were not called to speak—your name appeared on the list, but you still were not called to take part in that debate. In the evidence, it was suggested that a way to get round that is to lift the time limit, so we do not have the fixed voting time, and the moment of interruption is lifted, so that everybody gets to speak on the list. I guess my question to those of you who are arguing in favour of the call list is: if you could choose between the certainty of being able to speak—your name is on the list—and the certainty of voting, which would you pick?

I think there is a third way that could assist. I have only been here for 15 months. I asked Caroline Lucas, previous Green MP, and she said that it was really good during covid under those arrangements because you had that greater transparency and predictability, but I take your point. The thing that has really struck me is that frequently in long debates, I have seen initial speeches that can be 17 or 18 minutes, and then we have the introduction of a time limit—seven, six, five, four or three minutes. If you are from a smaller group, you are very likely to be at the end, so if you go in hoping to speak for six minutes, your time may be squeezed to three. I have literally experienced, after bobbing for four and a half hours, it being a technical limit of three minutes and the Speaker saying to me, “Two”. That seems to me, fundamentally, a real lack of fairness. I would favour a system whereby, as I have suggested, if you have a four-hour debate, even if you have a hard cut-off, maybe two hours of that debate is a clear call list with a short, maximum four minutes, speaking time for everybody—apart from perhaps the Minister and particular circumstances—so there is more opportunity for more people to have a say earlier in the debate. I think that that could also help to broaden the range of perspectives that are brought to the table in, say, the first half of the debate, and lead to a debate that is more substantive later on. Relatively shorter time limits might also help to cut out some of the bandying about of slogans that sometimes pads some speeches, which is to the detriment of the substantive content of the debate that we are all surely keen to get to.

I think very similarly. We know that there are different rules if it is legislation or other types of debate. Sometimes there is a lot of space for the early speakers. I have had exactly that experience, many’s the time, of trying to compress a complex argument, when you might have known in advance that you would be speaking for six, four or two minutes. I have had that specifically. Obviously everyone will have their areas of specialism—I am not pleading this from Northern Ireland—but there was a high-profile debate on previous legacy legislation, and some of the big beasts had some big thoughts about it. It got to an hour before the end, and not a single Northern Ireland Member—Members who would have obviously had lived experience—had had the opportunity to contribute. You were left dealing with complex arguments in two or three minutes at speed. We are all here to protect the quality of debate. In covid there was a bit of a hybrid, and you did get a sense of the order. If I recall correctly, there were time limits, and they pulled the plug. But it was all a bit ad hoc. I had one experience—the first time—when I said, “Oh, do I log back in for wind-up at the end of debate?” And the person said, “Put on BBC Parliament on your TV.” That was the workaround; I think we were all learning.

To go back to my original question, if you had to choose between endless debating time and the fixed voting times that we currently have, would you prefer to have the certainty of fixed voting?

When you say fixed voting time, do you mean the guillotine of the debate ending?

If 100 people want to speak, they all speak for as long as they want, but potentially vote at 2 am, as opposed to what happens just now.

I do not think those are two fair proposals. Like Ellie, I would go for a hybrid. We do not have endless debate for almost anything else, so there would be no reason to protect it in this scenario either.

I think there is an opportunity to look at fixed time slots in regard to speaking rights. I no longer prepare six-minute speeches; I prepare a three-minute speech, because I know where I am coming.

I’ll hold you to that.

I agree with Claire about some of the speeches that you have to sit through and try to see the relevance of, either to the topic or to where we are trying to get. That is the challenge for us—sitting and waiting to the end. I think something could be done earlier in regard to speaking times, but I would not be in favour of moving the fixed time guillotine at all.

How well do you think the current informal arrangement for seeking guidance on when you can expect to speak during a debate works?

Currently, it is possible to come out of your space on the Benches, go around to the Speaker’s Chair and ask where you are. As generally happens to me in long debates—I am talking about four or sometimes five-hour debates—you might be sitting there desperate for the bathroom, or maybe desperate for a banana or something to keep you going, and there is an opportunity to go and ask the Speaker. Sometimes you can get assured more than once in a debate that you are on the list and that they will get to you eventually, but there is no clarity on speaking time plus interventions. I have been in debates where I have been assured that I am on the list and will be reached, but then the debate has run out of time. It is not an ideal system for small parties, because it means that we habitually have to commit, as Claire said, to be there for the full four or five hours to be there at the end, but we are never completely sure when we will be called. If the Speaker does have a list of who is in what order, it would be preferable to know in advance. Wouldn’t it be lovely if that was published and we could access it on MemberHub, rather than physically having to go and ask the Speaker? There is potential to shift to a call list in a way that is not a huge shift from the current system, because there effectively already is a call list; it is just not transparent and there are no time limits, so you cannot have any degree of certainty about where you are on it. I want to emphasise that I would prefer a system where you basically go round all the parties in descending order first, so that you get lots of different political perspectives aired in the room. What tends to happen is that the first few hours of the debate are Labour, Conservative and some Lib Dems. Smaller-party voices tend to be brought in later than that, which again means that we, in particular, have to spend longer in the room. I frequently watch colleagues from other parties leave after they have said their piece and stayed for the subsequent two speakers. I would prefer a culture where we are all committed to staying there for the first couple of hours at least, and all our voices are heard in those first couple of hours.

I think there is a lot to commend that, and it is the case that you get slightly tweaked iterations of the same speech, back and forth. People perform for their clip rather than having that idealised form of debate. It is important to say that I think we have all had the experience where something is important enough that you commit the four hours and do not put anything else in your diary, but you still do not necessarily get in. Maybe we could have a bit more transparency around what is essentially an algorithm: the Speaker is using a formula. That would give a little bit more clarity. If there is an understanding of how many others are in the debate—occasionally you will see the Speaker saying, “Look, I’ve 23 Members still to speak”—colleagues are all, in some ways, looking out for each other. I think there is a sense of compressing your time if you know there are others trying to get in behind you but, as Ellie said, it would be better if that was a bit clearer, and time limits were put on a little earlier.

From my point of view, that engagement with the Chair is crucial. It is actually quite transparent and open. Our Speaker and Deputy Speakers are more than helpful in giving an indication of how long they think somebody is going to be speaking for and when we will get the opportunity to come in. Picking up on Ellie’s point about people staying for two speakers and then leaving, my concern is that if we introduce a published call list, you will know who the two speakers are before you, so you come in for the opening of the debate, you come in for the two speakers before you, you do your bit, you do the two speakers who speak after you and you come in for the close, so it no longer becomes a debate—

But I suppose—sorry.

That’s all right.

We’re having a debate here.

A call list would not help that; if the Chamber becomes so fluid that you get the same prepared points time after time because nobody knows what even their party colleagues said three speeches prior because they were not there, there also comes the problem that you start speaking in a debate into an empty Chamber.

We have some questions that we want to ask Claire, and I know that Claire’s time with us is limited, so I will bring in Lee.

Claire, you briefly mentioned covid. During the pandemic we published call lists for a period of time. What was your view on how it worked then, practically?

It was great simply that you knew whether or not you were going to get in. Bear in mind that when covid happened, I had been an MP for two or three months; I was still learning the ropes. It meant that you would definitely prepare, and that was back when I was trying to speak on a number of things. I probably spoke on more topics, in more debates, during that time than any other because I could invest the time. It worked really well. I am not suggesting that it did not work. I would fear the scenario that Robin outlined, where it is an appointment to speak and you are coming in for your slot. We do not want that, but the fact is that everybody is not sat hanging on every word of the other person, because they are trying to rearrange a meeting that they now cannot get to, or whatever. In the same way that you are required to come back in for the wind-ups and you have to be there at the start, there are ways of encouraging participation, such as the merits and demerits that we all know the Speaker might accrue to you based on your behaviour, your commitment, and all of that. There could be an eBay-style system where good behaviour is rewarded and bad behaviour is not. Yes, it worked really well, but that level of rigidity just probably would not work in normal times.

Through your lens as a small party, do you think that it at any time impacted the quality or nature of the debates?

Look, it was different because it was just sitting in your back bedroom, speaking. It is just not the same as a debate. Like others, I enjoy and welcome interventions and all of that. It was not like for like, but as I say, it meant that there was a degree of assurance that you were going to get in on a debate. I find Ellie’s proposal quite compelling—that you try to get a broad range of voices up front, or reasonably early on. That would broaden out and I think make for a wider debate and make for a wider set of viewpoints for subsequent speakers to respond to.

Claire, you had experience as an MLA. I will ask Robin the same question, but I am just trying to get Claire sorted so she can get away. There is a call list system in the Assembly. What were your experiences of that? Are there things that work or do not work?

Robin had to remind me that there were call lists in the Assembly. Due to the nature of Northern Ireland politics. I was by CV an MLA for four and a half years, but I had nine months on the ball in the Chamber because of two big shutdowns, on either side. Yes, it is slightly more predictable. It is kind of a D’Hondt formula, I think, which is one of these things we teach kids in school—sort of a spreadsheet formula, on the basis of party. You were able to say, “We will probably get three speakers in this debate, and it is going to be Robin, then Claire, then Ellie,” or whatever. Yes, there is a predictability, but I would not use conduct or output of the Northern Ireland Assembly against the concept of call lists.

It is helpful to get that on the record.

I am happy to respond to that. To Robin’s point, I completely agree. We would not want to be in a situation where we basically had a rolling set of half a dozen people in the Chamber, each of them staying for the two people before and the two people after. That really would not help. The two after thing is a convention. Potentially, we can change that. If we had a convention where everybody committed to stay there for the first 90 minutes or two hours and listen to everybody, rather than so many of us having to do some of our emails, if we are there for five hours, or respond to urgent media requests or things while we are there. The reason I would like to see call lists is because I believe it would help to improve the quality of focus and debate within the Chamber. That potential downside is something that I think could be absolutely avoided by changing the conventions, or just being very clear about the conventions and expectations of participation in debate. The point of it is not that you know that you are speaking at 2.35 pm, so you rock up at 2 pm and leave at 2.45 pm. There would be an opportunity to manage one’s time a bit better, so that you knew that you had to be there, say, for the first round of all of the speakers, and then, if you knew that you were not on the list for another three hours, perhaps you could pop out for an hour at some point, to participate in your Select Committee or whatever else it is that you are doing. While there might be potential theoretical downsides, they could absolutely be dealt with by clarity around other aspects of expectations around debate culture.

I think I have already articulated some of my concerns. Has the Chamber just become somewhere so managed that the spirit of debate gets completely lost? One other thing that has not been touched on is indicative timings. You can look at the Order Paper in the morning and the debate might look as if it is going to last six hours, but then you get three statements and three urgent questions, and all of a sudden your debate is down to three hours. So even if you had a published call list, you might have one with speakers for four hours—even with Ellie’s suggested slot at the end—but that could suddenly change within a few hours’ notice. This is a personal point, but I just worry that a call list can become a managed system. It can start off with the best will in the world, where everybody stays and listens, but human nature and the Whips Office will soon take control of where they want people to be, when they want them to speak, and all the rest of it. Chair, you mentioned the Northern Ireland Assembly; I was a Whip in the Northern Ireland Assembly for six years, with a speaking list, so I know exactly how the system can be worked.

Ellie, do you want to come in on that?

In the Green group, we don’t whip, but what I observe of other parties is that I see their Whips absolutely managing who is on the informal call list, in consultation with the Speaker and their party organisation, so I think that already happen. The speaking order is managed in the Chamber by the Whips. I am seeing some shakes and nods of heads here!

It is maybe just us who notice that.

Okay, it is clearly just from our side of the Chamber that that appears to be visible. Going back to the point raised by John around having cut-off times, or everybody having a time to speak, Robin makes a really good point that there is so much that is unpredictable in the timing of our day; it changes every morning, just before we start. But the advantage of having clarity about speaking-time expectations and speaking orders would be that, if the debate was suddenly condensed from six hours to three, you could still know that every party would have a chance to make their voices heard—preferably in the first part of the debate, when the Minister is still in the room listening, because often they have disappeared by the time our groups get to speak. Then, if you knew a debate was completely oversubscribed and you could fit in only 40 speakers, not the 80 on the list, that second set of 40 would get advance notice that they did not need to be in the Chamber, bobbing hopefully, because there was no chance that they would be reached. That could then be taken into account in future allocations of speaking times when they put their names in for future debates. I just think that transparency in advance would really help.

I would like to say two things on this. First, the Speaker and the Deputy Speakers do an amazing job, and an incredibly difficult job. My comments and my constructive criticism of the current system are absolutely no reflection on them as individuals or any aspect of how they have managed it so far; they are simply suggestions. I think we are in a sub-optimal equilibrium as an institution, and I think we could move to a more optimal one. Regarding codification, the way you have presented that as several layers of codification seems to me to be taking a particular perspective on it. I am in favour of codification. I would not see it as several layers; I would see it as clarification and increased transparency about the conventions that already exist. I completely agree with you that we want to encourage courteous debate. It is really important to ensure that there is equality, essentially, between speakers and that the conventions of politeness and listening to each other and to opposing views are enforced and maintained. I would want the Speaker and Deputy Speakers absolutely to continue to have those powers. We talked earlier about self-regulation, and that does happen to some extent, but not completely. I have been in debates where I was low down the list and bobbing for at least four hours, and there were several individuals in the Chamber who intervened on opposing speakers multiple times. I ended up almost counting them up, and I estimate that there were at least 100 interventions on other speakers in those debates. Meanwhile, the speaking time of those of us left on the list was squeezing and squeezing down, and I got three minutes at the very end. That was incredibly frustrating because, of course, it was not for the Speaker to control the number of interventions. These were people who had already had their speaking time and were then intervening multiple times to make party political points. Codification could, perhaps, help to deal with some of those flaws in the way that we collectively allocate time.

Politeness and courtesy in the Chamber do not need codification. We are moving far away from who we are and what we are actually meant to be doing, if it is going to be brought in that we have to codify how we speak and when we speak. If the additional onus on speaking lists is codification of how you speak, when you speak and who polices it, then it becomes a problem. With codification, you need it to be policed and enforced, and I think that takes away from the Speaker and the Deputy Speakers with regard to what they see from the position they hold in the Chair about how other Members behave and all the rest of it. I fully agree with Ellie’s point about interventions, especially by some of those who make long contributions and then repeat their speeches through interventions. That could be looked at from the Speaker’s Chair, rather than being brought in in this regard, because it is frustrating. I am not saying they are manufactured interventions, but the more interventions there are, the greater the chance there is of speakers from smaller parties being removed at the end.

Our Committee is the Procedure Committee, so we look at the Standing Orders. We cannot draw anything from the content of colleagues’ speeches or their courteousness or otherwise in the Chamber.

Robin, you have mentioned your experience in Northern Ireland. Would you mind telling us a bit more about that?

Looking at the speaking lists and the way the Northern Ireland Assembly works, it is done by D’Hondt. It depends on party size: it is biggest party, then second party, and you could get a number of speakers from those two parties before you move to the smaller parties at the end. The difference with the Northern Ireland Assembly is that there are two types of debate. The no day named list is a 90-minute debate, and I can tell you from having been Chief Whip, party leader and a Minister that, in a 90-minute debate, the mover has 10 minutes to move and 10 minutes to wind up, and all other Members will have five minutes. That is how structured that becomes, and it worries me that the Commons Chamber could move there. The Assembly Speaker, Edwin Poots, recently challenged the Members of the Assembly to move away from a public speaking chamber back to being a debating chamber. That is my worry about moving to that style. That is the way the speaking list works currently. When the Assembly was first established in 1998, a Member from every party spoke, in order of party strength, as Ellie suggested. That meant that party strength meant nothing in the debate, because by the time you got through the 90-minute slot, there had been one speaker from every party. That is why the Assembly changed it. The other drawback is that even with that D’Hondt list of speakers, should it be legislation, it is not timebound. We have had in the past Members standing up and speaking for an hour and a half, and that means that the vote comes at 2 am, which is not something that we want to move to here. As I said, I have seen it from all sides of the Chamber; I was the Whip, as well. You did know, in that 90-minute slot, if you were going to get two speakers, so it was always about who you could rely on, who you were going to put forward and who would carry the party line, rather than who else had an interest in the topic. I am not saying that is what I did, but I am sure that other Whips may have looked at a speaking list like that. It can be a way of rewarding good behaviour, or actually rewarding bad behaviour by putting somebody in a debate that they may not have an interest in or may not want to be in.

Thank you for that. It is really important that we listen to the experience that you have had. Will you expand a little on indicative timings of business, which I believe they do publish in—

They do. In the Northern Ireland Assembly it is a bit clearer than the Order Paper here. It is very much set out that, for example, there will be a debate between 2.30 pm and 3.30 pm, but it can still change should a Minister want to make a statement, for example.

Do they stick to those timings?

Unless a ministerial statement comes in out of left field, but because of our structures in the Northern Ireland Assembly, that very rarely happens. Urgent questions will come in, but they are timebound for half an hour; there are not the extended timings that we sometimes see here. You know that if an urgent question comes in, everything shifts by half an hour, so you have an idea when everything is going to be. Again, that is apart from legislation, which is not timebound.

So if it says a debate or an item of business is going to be an hour, it is an hour. It gets cut off.

It is an hour and a half—it is. If you go to the Northern Ireland Assembly and have a look around the Chamber, there are two large clocks, which tell you how long you have been speaking for and how long you have left. Those are there to keep Members on track. The Speaker will intervene at four minutes and 45 seconds to tell the Member that they have 15 seconds left. It becomes very structured.

Ellie, we have heard about Northern Ireland, but we are keen to hear about your experience of dealing with published call lists in the European Parliament. Could you outline how they worked there and how you found them?

I feel positive about them, based on my experience in the European Parliament. There is a system of allocation of time, partly divided between groups and partly in accordance with group size. There is also a portion of debate that is more open and freer. I only served for seven months, but there was a mechanism whereby you could be in a debate and go down and give a piece of paper to the Speaker saying that you wanted to speak—you could get into a debate right then and there. There were opportunities to prioritise speaking on issues that were particularly important to you. Even if you were not your party’s or political group’s main speaker—it would be them who had the first go-round slot—there were opportunities to put yourself on the list. You would not always get on to the list in the ballot, effectively, but if you were attending the debate and able to get on to the list at the last minute, there was also that opportunity to contribute. To me it seems like a really good balance between pre-programmed clarity about timings—the order in which people would speak was on our intranet—and allowing for a bit more of a flow of debate. There was still an opportunity for the equivalent of requests to give way. One of the main things determinative of the style of debate there was relatively short limits on speaking times. You did not have the thing that happens in some debates that I have observed here, where because of the impossibility for many people of waiting for five hours to get in, there can be a trend towards multiple interventions in the Minister’s and the shadow Minister’s speeches from people who have effectively prepared a mini-speech and are just looking for a hook to get it in. That hugely extends the principals’ speeches, often to a good half hour or so, and hugely squeezes the time for those who are committed to staying in there. Personally, I just do not do that, because it frustrates me so much to see other people doing it that it feels like a very unfair thing to do. But I can absolutely understand why people feel incentivised to take that quite instrumental approach to getting their clip and getting their point across. I think that stronger limits on speaking times, and more of a guarantee that more voices will be heard in a debate as a consequence, would also help to reduce the instrumentalisation of interventions in Ministers’ and shadow Ministers’ speeches. So yes, that speaking time limit is useful. I also want to reflect on my experience of serving on a council, both in opposition and as a cabinet member. This is a point that Green colleagues have made; all of us have previously served on councils. There, you have clear speaking limits—typically three minutes. It is perfectly clear that you have three minutes. That is the time that you have to say what you have to say, so you decide what are the most important points to make in that time. It is perfectly possible to do that, and those limits are very clearly enforced. That type of culture, of encouraging us all to come to the point, would be particularly useful, I think.

Point taken. [Laughter.]

I am aware I am elaborating on my arguments here!

It is a reasonable point.

The EU Parliament allows you to have your speech read into the record. Could you explain for the Committee what that is like and whether you think it would be useful?

I am aware that that kind of submission of a written statement is a procedure, but I never used it myself—I don’t recall ever using it myself. Sorry, I cannot comment.

Is there anything else on the issue of call lists that either of you feels has not been covered and that you would like to add? Do not worry: if you think of something afterwards, we are very happy as a Committee to receive in writing any additional thoughts that you have. We thank you again for your written evidence. That draws to an end our public evidence session today.