A scrutiny chair I know, let’s call them Alex, likes to say, ‘less chalk, more talk’, when inviting people to speak with scrutiny. This is often followed with, ‘this is a committee room, not a classroom!’ What they mean is, ‘we don’t need to waste time setting the scene, let’s get straight into discussion. Our time is limited after all’.

‘Less presentation, more conversation’ might be another way to put this, I guess.

I definitely get where Chairperson Alex is coming from. Maybe you do too?

A thirty-minute item on, say, the transport strategy, that starts with a 20-minute PowerPoint, feels more like a briefing with ‘we have some time left for questions’, than a scrutiny session. And, you might argue, this makes it a 10-minute item in reality.

Of course, briefings are important, but could you call them scrutiny?

After all, it’s the scrutiny talk that’s the real work. If something interesting and useful is going to happen, it’s more likely to be during the back-and-forth exchanges between scrutiny and the executive. Presentations may have been given many times and can start to feel automatic for the presenters. It’s when the conversation goes ‘off-script’ that interesting things start to happen.

Something else that worries Alex about PowerPoints and other long introductions is that it all makes preparation seem less important, at least for some committee members. I mean, why prepare if it’s all going to be explained to you on the day? You can even ask your clarifying questions at the meeting (a particular bugbear for Alex!).

Much better, Alex thinks, for committee members to know that they will be getting ‘straight into it’. And then, if they haven’t done their homework, they risk struggling to keep up.

And, if extra preparation is required, Alex might ask for a separate briefing from officers, perhaps online, for the committee beforehand (with PowerPoint welcome!).

Alex’s meetings haven’t always been run this way. The inspiration for this approach was Alex’s friend who chairs a parliamentary scrutiny committee. Most times this chair will start the ball rolling with a general question such as: “Well, thank you for sending over the draft transport strategy, we will no doubt get into more detail, but can I start by asking what you would consider the biggest challenges that the strategy needs to overcome?”

Sometimes, Alex’s friend will ask for some scene setting. They might say something like: “OK, I think it would be useful to understand how you would summarise this strategy. Can you start us off with a no-more-than-two-minute, overview?” Never a presentation though!

On the face of it, it might not seem super important, but wouldn’t it be a good thing if there was more time for scrutiny talk? After all, as Alex would say, ‘let’s keep our meeting for scrutiny and save the lectures for college’.

I hope this was useful to reflect on 🙏