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On Monday morning I often have meetings with constituents or organisations in the constituency or elsewhere in Scotland and then travel to the UK Parliament in London for parliamentary business, usually returning on the last flight to Edinburgh on Thursday evening. Fridays and often the weekend are taken up with meetings, constituents consultation sessions and dealing with correspondence. The emails just go on forever....
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Speaking In The Commons
Speaking in The Commons is one of the ways I try to get a FAIR DEAL for the people of Linlithgow and East Falkirk.
TV covers some Commons debates and most Question Times sessions but much of the work takes place in the committee rooms in Westminster. I devoted a lot of my time to working on these committees from 1992. When Labour first came to government in 1997 I served as a Private Parliamentary Secretary to a Minister. Since 1998 I have been a member of two of the Select Committees which investigate the performance of government. I combine this with activity in the chamber of the Commons.
The Commons chamber is often the place to put down public statements on issues that I have been working on in other ways, often over a long time. In this way I have raised issue such as NORTH SEA OIL & GAS, EMPLOYMENT, BP( Grangemouth ), ASYLUM, MINIMUM WAGE, WHISKEY EXCISE DUTY to name just a few. The various methods I have used include PARLIAMENTARY QUESTIONS (To Ministers and to the Prime Minister), SPEECHES, ADJOURNMENT DEBATES, and INTERVENTIONS during debates. In the past I have argued over the details of our Scottish Laws on the SCOTTISH BILLS COMMITTEE. Since elected, I have represented Labour on our SCOTTISH LAWS; EDUCATION, BANKRUPTCY, CRIMINAL PROCEDURES, CHILDREN and LOCAL GOVERNMENT REORGANISATION. These matters are now devolved to the Scottish Parliament.
From May 1997 until June 1998 I was Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Tom Clarke MP, Minister of State for film and tourism at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. In addition to other work as a Member of Parliament I assisted Tom in keeping his work as a minister "in tune" with the politics of the House of Commons.
Scrutinising European Laws
Since 1998 I have been a member of the European Scrutiny Select Committee and am now the Chair. This committee is responsible for looking at many controversial European issues that require an input from British Government ministers. If our committee feels that the government's position is not clear or in line with the political or economic interests of the UK they can call the policy into question while "reserving" the government's position. The committee has been deeply involved in scrutinising the ENLARGEMENT of the EU and the EU CONVENTION and CONSTITUTION. Some of the other major issues currently on the European agenda which we are involved in are:- Qualified Majority Voting on Europe Wide Issues; Common Foreign and Security Policy; European Court of Justice; Fisheries policies; European Charter of Fundamental Rights; Competition Policies (e.g. for Post & Telecoms); Hallmarking; Cross Border Co-operation on Policing and Anti - Drug trafficking; Chemical Testing; Future size of the European Commission; Number of votes per country in the Council of Ministers; The EU Financial Perspectives for 2007- 2013; Cohesion and Structural Funds etc.
Just as on the European Directives Committee I tried to influence and make changes to policies from Europe and cut through Euro-babble on Agriculture, Fishing, the Environment, Transport, Forestry, Road Networks, Farm Animal Transport and Recycling, so the work continues on a wider range of issues.
From 1997 until 2001 I volunteered to be a member of the Information Select Committee of the Commons. Through this committee I tried to increase the scope and quality of the Information & Computer Technology used by both the Houses of Parliament and elected Members. Some progress has been made with all MP's now provided with high quality computers, linked using the internet (and the parliament's own Intranet) to communicate and access information by MP's and their staff. The Parliamentary On-line Information System (POLIS) is accessible at different levels to MP's and the Public, with a very good Young Peoples' Guide to the workings of parliament. We now use Broadband links and can even table questions by email. The committee broke new ground by holding a "paperless" committee. All documents were sent out via the Intranet and members brought their laptop computers to the Boothroyd committee room in the new Portcullis House. The committee clerk displayed the text from his laptop on a linked screen, and amendments were tabled, and typed by each member into their own machines. A first for the UK parliament, but possibly a glimpse of the future?
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