MSPs told: You must work much harder, 'ten weeks a year'

• Jackson Carlaw: Withering assessment of the parliament Photo: TSPL

The hard-hitting report, to be published today, will suggest that MSPs, who receive almost 60,000 per year and many of whom do not have their own constituencies, must work "much harder" for the Scottish people.

First Minister's Questions, supposedly the showpiece event of the parliamentary week, is described as a "quite ghastly misadvertisement for the Scottish Parliament" in the paper by Jackson Carlaw, the Conservative front-bench spokesman on transport.

Speeches are "contrived like a theatrical production", with members often standing up to make the same points, it says.

The paper, which has been seen by The Scotsman, is entitled "It's time to realise the potential of the Scottish Parliament".

It will be published today as the Conservatives gather in Eastwood for their annual West of Scotland Conference.

Mr Carlaw's withering assessment of the work done by the Scottish Parliament analyses a typical parliamentary week, which sees committees sit throughout Tuesday and Wednesday morning with meetings of the full parliament in the chamber - known as a plenary sessions - taking place on Wednesday afternoons and Thursdays.

The parliament, which took great pride in differing from Westminster by having family-friendly hours, does not meet on a Monday or a Friday.

That time is allocated for constituency work.

Seventy-three of the parliament's 129 MSPs actually have constituencies. The other 56 were elected under the list system.

Mr Carlaw calculated that, when committee work was excluded, the parliament sat for only eight and a half hours a week.

"This is neither impressive nor acceptable," he said in his paper. "Members of the Scottish Parliament cannot possibly fulfil all their responsibilities by meeting in plenary session for what is effectively just one day a week."

Mr Carlaw worked out that the time that MSPs spent in full parliamentary session totalled just ten working weeks a year, when the extensive breaks for recess were taken into account.

"Effectively, this means that the actual time devoted to plenary meetings in a given year is between 323 and 380 hours.

"Simply put, this is roughly equivalent to ten weeks of work for an average employee," Mr Carlow stated in the paper.

"Can Scotland be governed effectively when its legislators only meet together for the equivalent of ten weeks a year?"

Mr Carlaw suggested that parliament should sit on more days a week and should sit later on Wednesday evenings - pointing out that list MSPs had lower levels of constituency caseloads than those who won their post under the first-past-the-post element of Scottish elections.

Committees should also be held while the chamber sits.

Mr Carlaw called for reform of First Minister's Questions, the weekly joust that sees Alex Salmond respond to questions put to him by the opposition party leaders.

The Presiding Officer should be given more authority to make sure ministers answered questions, and First Minister's Questions should be extended from half an hour to 45 minutes and made more flexible to improve encounters described by Mr Carlaw as "30 minutes of tedious verbal torture".

Mr Carlaw, who stressed that his conclusions were his own and not his party's, suggested that the "arbitrary" timescales given to members' contributions should be removed and said he believed the tight control exerted by party whips was stifling debate.