I understand where Dave Thompson is coming from, but I think that the possibility of there being an increase in the number of members is remote to the point of vanishing. The only argument that might bear scrutiny in that regard outside this building would be if there were a transfer to another system of proportional representation, which would probably mean a single transferable vote system. If we did that, in order to get manageable sizes of multimember constituencies we would probably have to increase the number of MSPs to 200. I was a member of the Arbuthnott commission on boundaries and reporting systems, which is why I have that arcane bit of knowledge. I do not think that that will happen—certainly not in my lifetime and probably not in the lifetime of anybody else in this room.
We have 129 members: how do we make best use of them and ensure that arrangements are practical and effective for them? Hugh Henry and I have both been ministers, as has the convener—we know the information resource that ministers can draw on. When a minister goes to a committee, particularly when they are proposing legislation, they go well armed with a great deal of information. Moreover, the work that they do, and the facts that they are absolutely steeped in the work of their department and see vast volumes of paper every single day mean that they know their subject inside out. Every committee that deals with a minister should be resourced in the same way; they must be able to get immersed in the subject, but if you stretch members over two or three committees they do not have that opportunity. This is not a criticism of the Parliament.
I also believe that, with the best will in the world, current resourcing of committees does not allow that to happen. In the legislative process, for example, you would have to provide to committees some extremely sophisticated legal advice about the technicalities of legislation in order to let them compete on anything like a level playing field with ministers—especially at stage 2, when we go into the absolute detail of the legislation.
We need to resource committees better and we need to reduce the number of committees. I do not think that we need to exactly mirror each ministerial portfolio, especially because those change over time—we saw another set of changes last year. We could perhaps have broad-based subject committees that would be built up and developed using Parliament’s resources, with limited membership such that every member of the Parliament would sit on just one committee. That would deliver higher-level scrutiny, and the conveners of the committees, who would be elected by Parliament, would become an elite cadre.
Incidentally, convener, when you introduced us, you said that Hugh Henry and I had both been committee conveners. However, although I aspire to those heights, I have never been a committee convener.
The arrangement that I outlined would deliver a better-functioning Parliament. It would take some work—it would not be easy, but it could be achieved. The academics to whom the committee spoke were correct to say that Parliament was advanced when it started, but I think that it is now a little bit behind. It needs to get in front of things again; the new powers and the changes that we are discussing could make that happen.