Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. I should just be quite clear that the 12-month pilot is solely in relation to proxy voting. It's not about hybrid proceedings. In relation to criteria, yes, you're correct. There are no criteria at the moment, and I don't envisage that ever becoming the case from wh

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There isn't, no. The one exception to that would be in relation to whether the presiding officer chooses to say something in calling a member. Sometimes you'll find a presiding officer calling a member and saying, “and the member joins us remotely”, so that would be there on the

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's entirely correct, yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sure. I can do that. It's very much left up to the discretion of members. I think the guidance in the committee's report is really to allow people to challenge that, if they suspect that a member is beginning to overuse hybrid or to use it for inappropriate reasons. This will

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would say yes. Like everyone else, I think, we very quickly moved to virtual proceedings. In what were the very early days, it was simply party leaders questioning the first minister of Scotland. We then built on that small start by allowing other members to participate. Then,

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. As you understand, the committee has stopped short of recommending that there be any set criteria or any rules that need to be complied with, but it did set out its views based on evidence that heard of the likely circumstances that would make it app

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you for the questions. I'll just jump immediately to your final question. I think it's highly likely that we will retain hybrid facilities into the longer term. I think we're already going down that track, although the committee has asked for the implications of working in

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Chair. I want to address my remarks today to the future of hybrid proceedings in the Scottish Parliament, and I hope the committee finds this useful. Since I last spoke to the committee in 2020, our procedures committee has conducted an inquiry into the fut

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not sighted on the fine detail of it, but we had a very quick look at it. I understand the system of remote voting the European Union has implemented is quite convoluted. I think it involves voting sheets being faxed to MEPs for them to fill in and then fax back from designat

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If I could offer an observation from Scotland, one of the things we have noticed is that because some of our question times have been out of the parameters of the Standing Orders, it has meant that the questions are not submitted and published in advance, so the cabinet secretari

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'd be more than happy to do that. It's something that we're hoping to make progress on in the next couple of weeks. If that would assist the committee, I'm more than happy to do that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I can quickly add that it was very much the same in Scotland. We had cross-party consensus from a very early stage, and that was conducted through the cross-party parliamentary bureau.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, I don't think you misheard me. We did have existing business continuity plans, in line with the standard plans that I think a lot of legislatures and other businesses have, and just by outrageous coincidence.... There are different aspects of business continuity plans and dif

Procedure and House Affairs committee  To do the last part of your question first, we didn't experience a great deal of difficulty in persuading the political parties to agree with what we were planning to do. That wasn't an issue for us. In relation to the Standing Orders change, we did anticipate there would be mor

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, thank you, Chair, and I'll maybe ask Bill Ward to say a few words just at the end. Thank you for the invitation to give evidence. I'm delighted to contribute to this discussion on behalf of the Scottish Parliament. Bill Ward is our head of the broadcasting service, and hi