Stenograma dezbaterilor

Miercuri, 11 mai 2016 - Strasbourg

7. Votare

  President. – The next item is the vote.

(For the results and other details of the vote: see Minutes).

***

We have a request for a point of order from a colleague of ours who would like to address us.

  David Campbell Bannerman (ECR). – Mr President, on a point of order regarding Rule 130 on parliamentary written questions (PQs). Regardless of our party or personal views we are all parliamentarians and one of the most important powers we have is the ability to hold the executive to account through parliamentary PQs, but these PQs are now being treated with contempt by the services. Questions are not receiving proper answers, they are evasive, incomplete and dismissive, and the timescale for answering is frequency exceeded. Rule 130(5) states six weeks is the acceptable deadline, yet some are taking up to 11 weeks. We are also being made subject to bureaucratic limits on questions, imposed by those very same technocrats. This undermines democracy and must be urgently remedied.

(Applause)

  President. – Thank you very much but I was reminded that those limits were our decision, so perhaps we should also consider that. In any case, we have taken note and certainly will pass this over to the relevant authorities.