Status quo not an option, insists Holyrood's new Presiding Officer
Kenny Gibson has announced a raft of reforms at the Scottish Parliament
The new Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament has announced a major overhaul of its weekly proceedings.
Kenny Gibson told MSPs the status quo is not an option, adding: “I’m keen to push at the boundaries of what’s possible within my remit.”
He said the collegiate style of working envisioned in the 1990s had “not fully transpired”.
It comes after the long-serving SNP politician complained Holyrood had become "quite ossified" and "dull".
The Presiding Officer is a neutral role similar to that of the Speaker of the House of Commons.
Mr Gibson said there will now be two 30-minute sessions of First Minister’s Questions (FMQs) on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
The first will be for backbenchers, and the latter for party leaders, with Reform UK and Labour taking it in turns to go first.
Both parties secured 17 seats at the election earlier this month, making them the joint second-largest parties in Holyrood.
“From now on, no First Minister’s Questions will be published in advance,” Mr Gibson said. “All will be taken from the floor.”
Labour, Reform and the Greens will get three questions each, he said, while the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will get two.
Next Thursday will see a 45-minute session of FMQs as normal before the new system starts the following week.
Mr Gibson said Holyrood needed to “declutter and simplify” in order to make it more topical and effective.
“I quite enjoy a boisterous chamber, within reason,” he said. “But courtesy doesn’t have to be thrown out the window.
“And I have little patience for heckling a question one has personally asked while a minister is responding.”
Asked about the changes by journalists, First Minister John Swinney said: “As somebody once said in this building, bring it on.”
This is a reference to the phrase used by former Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander in 2008 in relation to an independence referendum.
There has long been talk of the need to shake up Holyrood, and Mr Gibson described himself as the "insurgent's candidate" following last week’s Presiding Officer election.
"If some things don't work, we will change them again to try something different,” he told The Times.
"So a lot of the things I'm going to bring in, I think, we'll try for six months or a year and if they work really well, we'll keep them on. If they don't, we'll change them."
He added: "So I'm looking at a permanent revolution, if you like - looking for continuous change, continuous innovation, continuous challenge."
Mr Gibson defeated fellow SNP MSPs Clare Haughey and Stuart McMillan, as well as Liberal Democrat Liam McArthur for the post.
In the final round of voting, he received 74 votes from MSPs, defeating Ms Haughey, who had 54.
“I intend to be imaginative, I intend to be innovative, but I will also be firm in the chair where necessary,” he said last week.
“I want to make everything somewhat more enjoyable than it has perhaps been in the past.
“It had got dull, so let’s hope that era has come to an end.”
Labour MSP Neil Bibby said: “In the past we have seen a culture of secrecy and arrogance in the SNP and the Scottish Parliament must be equipped to tackle that.
“It is right that the Parliament is working to strengthen accountability and create more opportunities for scrutiny.”
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