Good Parliaments Are Not Made in a Day

Sir Evan Paul Silk is a British expert who carried out assessments of the rules of procedure reforms in Georgia on two occasions earlier this year. In this interview with the Parliament Magazine, Silk draws on the positives in the rules of procedure reform in Georgia. He also talked about the example of the British Parliament but, more significantly, he emphasized that the positives recorded by the Parliament of Georgia must be continually pursued.

You made a thematic assessment of the Rules of Procedure reform in Georgia twice this year, one was in January and the second in July, although six months is not enough time for big changes, you still found some positive changes, overall, how do you assess the Parliamentary Oversight Function in Georgia?

The change hasn’t happened yet, but the proposals for change are those that are contained in that second assessment. I was very impressed by the desire for change among many people in Georgia. It was very much a Georgian driven process and reform, and I was brought in as an external expert in parliamentary procedure to give my assessment from an external viewpoint of the changes. I think that’s a positive thing that was done in Georgia – to have enough confidence in what your compatriots are doing to ask for somebody from outside to come in and make an assessment.

As an outsider, you’re never going to understand everything about the political culture of the country you’re coming to, but you can bring that external expertise as long as you’re not dogmatic about it, as long as you don’t tell people how things must be done. Because it has to be Georgian solutions to Georgian problems. The process of change is continuing with the people like the first vice speaker in the lead. It’s a very impressive process to observe.

I think there’d been some really innovative things that have been included in the new rules procedure. Things like thematic rapporteurs, the more effective forms of executive accountability to parliament, the new interpellation procedure, the new ways in which ministers can be questioned and held to account. I think the way the Group of Trust is now regulated and the way its membership is shared between the different interest groups inside the parliament, is something which many other parliaments would be envious of. I would also mention that the Gender Equality Council and the Open Government Council now have oversight functions. That’s innovative and very welcome. All these are examples of important and valuable developments to increase the oversight function.

I believe that the process of reform in a good parliament never ends. A good Parliament always looks to improve its rules of procedure. There are things that can be done to improve the Georgian Parliament in the future. I’m sure there are things that can be done in the French Parliament, the German Parliament, the British Parliament, and every other Parliament to improve the way it operates. But certainly, I’m very confident in saying that, the proposals which are now before the Georgian parliament – I believe they haven’t yet been formally adopted – will certainly increase the oversight function.

In your first assessment, you mentioned that there are things that are desirable, but will not be achieved, firstly because capacity is lacking to draft or to implement and secondly because of the absence of the political will, could you elaborate on this?

That was a general point. Every good parliament is always going to want to improve its rules of procedure and to do things better. Perhaps in an ideal world there is an absolutely perfect form of parliamentary practice, but that theoretically perfect form of parliamentary practice is not going to be obtainable in any parliament for political reasons and practical reasons.

Let me start off with capacity. In the US Congress, each committee has got 30 or 40 staff. They can do far more than the staff of the British parliament, and the British parliament is more generously staffed than the Georgian parliament and the Georgian parliament is more generously staffed than some of the parliaments in Africa for example. Each Parliament can only do what its resources allow. So if you don’t have the resources to analyse legislation, if you don’t have the money or the people to do it, then it’s pointless having rules of procedure that provide for it to be done. So that was what I was saying about resources, a lack of capacity, a lack of money, a lack of people to do things.

The other side of it is that sometimes, something might look desirable to an outsider like me. I might think that it would be very good to change the Georgian rules of procedure in a particular way. Then I am told that it will never work in Georgia because, for example, this particular interest group won’t allow it to happen. So you have to recognize that, if you’re an external observer, there are always going to be political imperatives inside every country. I’ve been fortunate in the last 10 years to work in about 20 or 25 different countries and I have always had to recognize that each country has its own way of doing things and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all rules of procedure that will suit every country.

So that was essentially what I was trying to say. It was a general point; it was not a point in which I was being critical of Georgia. And one thing I think I would say is that, while there are clearly a strong differences of political opinion inside the parliament of Georgia, I was very impressed by the willingness of people from the different factions to recognize that they were all in it together. They all have an interest in having an effective parliament. I certainly didn’t detect when I was in Georgia that there was a sort of general lack of political will for rules of procedure to be reformed. Of course individuals wanted rules of procedure to be reformed in a way which suited their particular interests. But overall my view was that the parliamentarians from all sides were willing to work to have an effective parliament which recognizes the rights of the majority and the rights of the minority.

What is a British example of parliamentary oversight andwhat lessons can Georgia draw from it?

We have a long parliamentary tradition, but it’s by no meansperfect. And we’re always trying to reform the way in which wedo things. This is why there will be people who will tell you thatoversight could be improved in Britain.

The important thing to remember in the context of oversight is that in Britain our ministers are all members of parliament, so they’re not separate from parliament as in France. There is a very strong tradition that for every action that a minister takes, he or she is ultimately answerable to parliament. There are two aspects to that which are interesting and relevant in the Georgian context. One is the questioning of ministers in parliament. Four days a week, for an hour each day, a minister answers questions, or several ministers answer questions, from members of parliament. Those questions are distributed between the different ministers in a fair way. Senior ministers answer questions once every month, but some minister or other answers questions every day. So for example, the Minister for foreign affairs will answer once a month and Minister for energy will also answer once a month and so on. Also every week, for half an hour, the Prime Minister answers questions. This is a very fundamental part of political life in Britain: every Wednesday afternoon from 3:00 o’clock till about 3:40 the Prime Minister answers questions from members of parliament. So that’s an obvious way in which ministers are held to account.

But I think that more effective oversight comes through a system of committees. Now, we are unusual internationally in having two sorts of committees. There are committees which deal with legislation, but there are also committees which only have the responsibility for oversight. Each government department, each department of State, has a committee which oversees the department’s work. So there is a defence committee overseeing the Ministry of Defence, a committee on the interior ministry overseeing the interior ministry, and so on. These committees have the power to look at information from these departments, to call ministers and officials before them and to examine anything to do with expenditure of that department, the administration of that department or the policy of that department. The committees can initiate their own inquiries. That’s a very important and powerful tool of oversight.

So both the question time in plenary and the oversight committees are very effective means of accountability. British MPs from the left of politics have a different view on many issues from MPs from the right of politics, and there is confrontation between these two sides. That’s a normal feature of parliamentary life. But there’s also a lot of cooperation as well. My experience in Britain is that although people have strongly different views about some things they all want common outcomes on many issues. So people, for example, may have different views of the best economic mechanisms for governing the country, but they all want children to learn well; they all want hospitals to function well; they all want us to have good relations with other countries; they all want our armed forces to be effective. So, there’s a lot more cooperation than confrontation inside the British parliament.

After the first assessment, the Minister’s Hour, when each Minister is obliged to appear at least once a year, has been established, although it is a much more effective mechanism than the previous Government Hour, it doesn’t seem enough even according to your first assessment, what are your thoughts on that?

I’m very pleased by the way that the rules of procedure have been amended to make the minister’s hour more effective. You now have a system where every minister will have an hour once a year before plenary and that is a great improvement. I think it would be possible in the future to make it more frequent. I think we’re a long way away from the Prime Minister in Georgia being willing to come before Parliament every week. Once a year is great, but perhaps that can be increased gradually over time so that ministers come more frequently to parliament, perhaps twice a year. The way in which the British system works is quite different but I think that it would be possible to build a new procedure to allow more frequent appearances of ministers before plenary and more frequent appearances of the Prime Minister before plenary.

You described the Kutaisi building as not efficient for the parliamentary system, the same was argued by the former Speaker Davit Usupashvili in his interview with us last year, do you think that there is a lack of political will or there is an objective reason for that?

Again, this is something where I’m hesitant as a foreigner to say too much about a sensitive issue in Georgia. I’ve only been able to find one other country where parliament meets in a different city from the government. There are countries like Australia and the Netherlands where the national capital is not the largest city, but the only other country that I’ve found where the government offices are in one city and the parliament is in another one is the Ivory Coast. I can understand that in every country, not least my own country, people say there is too much concentrated in the capital city. People say London has lots of economic advantages and the government should invest much more in the other cities. Strangely enough, in Britain, the parliament building is going to have to undergo extensive restoration in the next couple of years. People have said that the British parliament should move to another city while the London building is closed for restoration. This idea has been rejected because the government is based in London. I think that’s the fundamental problem for Georgia. The fact that the government is based in Tbilisi, that the ministers are based in Tbilisi, and they’re not willing to go to Kutaisi. I think that’s rather important. It’s administratively difficult. It’s difficult for the members of parliament to keep offices in two places. It’s difficult for the staff. You know, the European Parliament meets both in Strasbourg and in Brussels, and that’s costly and difficult. As long as the government stays in Tbilisi, I would recommend that the parliament stays there too.

Overall, how do you assess Parliamentarism in Georgia, the move to a parliamentary system and challenges of the unicameralism?

There are challenges in Unicameralism. In Britain, we have two houses of Parliament. Leave aside the rather strange way in which one house is not an elected - something that is completely unjustifiable. But the unelected house in Britain is often referred to as the revising chamber It can look again at legislation and has more time to make sure that legislation is in a good form before it’s passed. So, there are some advantages.If you have another chamber that chamber can think through legislation again. That slows the legislative process down a little bit. One of the problems in Georgia has been that legislation is dealt with too quickly. Often legislation which is considered too quickly proves not to work very well. So it is better to consider it in slower time and give it more consideration to make sure it’s going to work well. That can happen more easily in a two chamber parliament.

However, more and more parliaments in the world are becoming unicameral. Unicameralism does work. Particularly when you have a unitary, non-federal, state like Georgia, I don’t think there’s any problem with a unicameral legislature. The one suggestion I would make is that the Georgian Parliament recognizes the challenges of unicameralism and slows down its processes of legislation so that legislation is better scrutinized.

How do I assess more generally, parliamentarism in Georgia?

Well, I think there are, as I said before, some really impressive people who are pushing for the improvement of the situation in Georgia – the politicians who want change and indeed the staff that I met. They have done an enormous amount of work.It really has been a Herculean amount of work that has been done to make the rules of procedure better. That’s great. There’s a desire for change and there are impressive agents of change.I was delighted that the new rules of procedure put a duty of fairness onto the Speaker and onto the chairs of committees.I was pleased to see a better balance between the different groups inside the parliament and an understanding of the need for the strengthening of the rights of the minorities, tempered by a recognition of the right of the majority to get its will through.There is a better timetable planning, a committee structure that works, an improved legislative system and a real effort to base the parliament on principles of transparency and openness. So there’s every reason to feel that this has been a step change in the right direction for parliamentarianism in Georgia. There are things that still need to be done but no parliament is perfect. Good parliaments always recognize that there is more of what can be done in the future.