I'm going to make a suggestion and wonder whether committee members have an interest in entertaining this.
Previously at this committee, when we had witnesses, instead of a 10-minute presentation by them, we had seven-minute presentations. Our rotation then was such that we would have seven minutes for the first round of questions and would then go to five minutes and then, in fact, I think, to three minutes. If time were available in the last round, instead of being two and a half minutes, it could be three minutes. I'd like to see whether there is any interest in looking at adjusting this.
I recognize that the proposed 10 minutes came from the procedure and House affairs committee and from negotiations and so on, there, but that too was the case in the last Parliament. However, this committee chose to do something a little different. We found that when we had witnesses presenting—and we often have quite a number of witnesses—we could get into a situation where the presentations consumed a lot of time, and therefore questioning by the committee was severely reduced.
I would like to test the floor to see whether there is interest in reducing the presentations by witnesses from 10 minutes to seven minutes, and then going to a round of questioning of seven minutes in the first round, five minutes in the second round, and then three minutes instead of two and a half in the last round.