BACKBENCHERS who represent the governing party at Holyrood should be banned from holding the key jobs on major committees, the Scottish Tories have said.
Ruth Davidson's party set out preliminary proposals that they said would ensure Scotland had a "parliament with real teeth" following the announcement that structures at Holyrood are to be reviewed.
If the measures were accepted, it would mean SNP politicians such as James Dornan, convenor of the education committee and Local Government convenor Bob Doris would be stripped of their roles.
A review, announced by presiding officer Ken Macintosh, follows concern that Holyrood is failing in its task of effectively holding the Government to account.
The Conservatives also said that ministers should be quizzed by their opposition counterparts more regularly and that MSPs should serve on committees for the full parliamentary term. However, the party ruled out supporting a second chamber.
Scottish Conservative chief whip John Lamont said: "The last parliament, when the SNP had a majority, exposed the flaws in our democracy. SNP MSPs toed the party line, put party before parliament, with the result that bad laws were rail-roaded through.
"The Scottish public ended the SNP’s majority, and we now have a more balanced parliament. So we welcome the Presiding Officer’s plan to ensure we get a parliament with real teeth.
"We don’t need yet more politicians in Scotland. We do need a parliament with more clout which can hold this Government to account. Our proposals will help do that – and we hope they will attract cross-party support."
The Commission on Parliamentary Reform will study the role of Holyrood in scrutinising legislation, the committee system and parliament's independence from the Scottish government. The study will be led by the outgoing Electoral Commissioner John McCormick.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel