Is there a better way to debate?

While many people see the final debate on Assisted Dying as a great success, I beg to differ. Theatre doesn’t make good policy - so what does?

It appears universally agreed that the debate about Liam McArthur's Assisted Dying Bill was the Scottish Parliament at its very best. But I'm not feeling it, and it's not just the outcome but the whole thing. The further I get from it the more I feel that it was parliament at its worst.

It's not just the result and it's not just the process, it's the entire conceptual model of parliamentary debate. This was viewed as a great event because people made nice speeches. But I'll tell you what, if I thought the purpose of parliament was nice speeches I'd vote for novelists and actors. The purpose of parliament is 100 per cent not speeches.

So tell me this; take speeches out and what was so great about it? The 3,627,186 amendments (or whatever it was)? The enormous divergence between what the parliament did and what the public wanted? The fact that after two years and having agreed the principle of the Bill they couldn't produce sufficiently good legislation?

Or the fact that this whole thing has been, for an awful lot of them, about anything except people in need? Is that what was so great about this, the narcissism? The strange idea that policy is better made on the basis of who has the most emotive anecdote? Don't assess the evidence, count the tears?

It has returned me to a discussion from five or so years ago that I found tedious but still important – how should we contest each other's ideas? This was the era of wanna-be alpha males hollering 'debate me, dude' on social media. Debate was being turned into gladiatorial conflict, not a battle of ideas but a crude form of linguistic belligerence. Charlie Kirk was its exemplar.

Inevitably, the other side called this 'patriarchal' and demanded it be replaced via another method of exploring conflicting positions. The leading contender was 'an exchange of long-form writing', along the model of the post-enlightenment practice of long exchanges of letters between competing thinkers.

Of course, it took about two seconds for people to point out that if debate is 'patriarchal' then long-form writing is class-based exclusionism that very greatly favoured the university-educated middle classes.

All of this disguises the core point – debate isn't meant to be about winners and losers but about synthesis. Debate goes back millennia, but its concept is best grasped from Fredrick Hegel and his dialectic. You probably remember it – thesis (an idea), antithesis (a competing idea), synthesis (something emerging from the interplay that is better than either).

Thing is, in our modern world everyone forgets about the synthesis part, and that is never more true than in a circumstance where politicians can support the right to a dignified death in principle, identify some issues and weaknesses, spend a year before that arguing about it and a year afterwards going through the issues and objectives – but seemingly without being able to address them.

I'm a strong supporter of assisted dying but that isn't really relevant to this point. The point is that if a parliamentary process agrees something in principle but can't put it together in practice, it is a humungous fail, and it is not a failure improved by rhetoric.

Parliamentary debate is supposed to improve outcomes, not lead to stalemate. If the way we do debate takes an issue that has majority support and then a year later produces an outcome that doesn't, how is that positive? What did we gain? Because we definitely lost a lot of time to this.

This isn't an issue you can 'solve' because humans fundamentally disagree and if there was some way to take every disagreement and produce a third option which entirely met all the asks of both sides without compromise, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in.

So before anyone says 'centrism', let's knock that on the head. This is all a crisis of centrism and it's Thatcherite 'there is no alternative'. Centrism doesn't like debate, it likes compliance. It can't believe that there is ever a reason to doubt an established political consensus. Centrism opposes learning from its own mistakes.

Which all means you can't 'solve' this problem, but you can make the process for getting there better or worse, more likely to produce broadly-supported outcomes or less likely, more effective or less effective.

To see what this might look like, let's turn to 'parliament at its finest', the speech-fest we just went through. Tell me this; did anyone enter that room planning to vote one way, heard a speech and then changed their mind? If so, if after all this protracted debate, they discover something new at the last minute then I have serious concerns about their fitness as a lawmaker.

But if the answer is no, what's the point? Parliament isn't meant to be a personal showcase where we pay people to grandstand. Nor is it meant to be an expensive reputation-laundering exercise where you can vote 'the wrong way' but make a long speech to justify it.

There is a political realm and a parliamentary realm and they are kept distinct for a reason. The processes of politics do not make good policy and the processes of making policy do not make good theatre. One ought to be entertaining but has limited real functionality outside of elections while the other is important but dull to watch .

“If our parliament can’t make law competently, it is not us who need to change”

How could this have been better? First and most clearly, there should have been a lot more legislative drafting support from the outset. It is fundamentally important that it is not only the government that can introduce legislation. Neither the ban on smoking in public places nor the period poverty legislation would have happened if it wasn't for backbenchers with nerve.

But if they are left to cobble together draft legislation without proper support we get legislation that needs countless amendments. That is fundamentally wasteful of time and money. The Bill should have been in better shape from the outset.

Then it gets introduced and goes through a Stage One debate to establish whether the principles of the Bill are supported. For me, if the answer is 'yes' then legislation must be passed into law. It is utterly scurrilous that lawmakers can grandstand on principle knowing they can later ditch it all if they didn't really mean it.

How about if politicians agree the principle of legislation but cannot get the details sorted and vote it down at Stage Three then their pay is docked by ten per cent until they do successfully pass legislation. That would focus their minds, no?

In fact, perhaps at Stage One people should be made to state exactly what must be improved by Stage Three. This 'we all agree but we'll decide on what it is we agree about later' stuff is clearly a bad way to make policy. Let a statement of principle be agreed with 'amendments' adding conditions that must be met before Stage Three.

The key phase is really Stage Two, the deliberative stage. If this was working anything like it should, that is where the hard work of resolving all of this should take place, where the conditions attached at Stage One should be met. I've never met anyone who thinks the Holyrood committee system is terribly effective, in large part because of the degree of control the parties exert.

Perhaps each Bill should get a bespoke Committee to see it through, elected during the Stage One debate. That doesn't exactly prevent the abuse of behind-the-scenes deals but it might make the committee work more effective, and a working committee does not just need to be made up of politicians. Perhaps it should work in phases, bringing sets of amendments to parliament throughout the process and getting them agreed in batches.

The point is that by Stage Three, I don't want them debating, I want them formally approving or rejecting. I'd generally prefer it if they didn't talk at all. I really, really don't care if they have an elderly relative for whom assisted dying is their greatest hope or their biggest fear. We don't make policy for the the relatives of politicians.

But I do want to know why they voted however they voted, because I want to be able to hold them accountable. While I have little good to say about the US Supreme Court, there is one practice I think might be quite interesting to look at – majority and minority opinions.

Basically when the Supreme Court makes a decision, every member of the Court can write an 'opinion' explaining why they ruled the way they did, or they can choose to join and support someone else's opinion. Mostly that breaks down as majority (those who prevailed) against minority (those who didn't), but fairly regularly the minority or majority split and offer slightly different reasons for reaching the same decision.

Imagine all MSPs had say 200 words to explain their decision, could write their own or sign someone else's, what would that look like for the Assisted Dying Bill? Well I would know those for whom faith played a role. I could respect their decision – and then I personally would seek to vote them out of office on the basis that I don't want people to make policy in conversation with gods, golems, goblins or any other imaginary creatures.

I would know who had serious concerns about coercion and why they think amendments didn't solve the problem. I would know the ones for whom I have most contempt, the 'not the status quo, but not change either' brigade who are frankly just spineless and I'd also like out my parliament.

These are just thoughts, not settled opinions. This has all been gnawing away at the back of my mind since the vote. I have heard people say 'we need a Citizens Assembly to make these difficult decisions'. Great – the cost of it should then be taken out of the pockets of the politicians because if we have to agree new processes because they can't do their job and we don't trust them, we shouldn't have to pay for it.

I'm sick of 'our parliament is broken so let's do something else'. No. If it is broken let's fight to make it better, to make it fit for purpose. I know how much the politicians like their wee video clips of their barnstorming speeches so they can use it in campaigning. Great, pay for that yourself and do it on your own time.
When we're paying you, get your job done. If our parliament can't make law competently, it is not us who need to change. Yes, the nature of debate is a global problem, but it is a local one too. Scotland was let down. Don't applaud the people who did it, and don't let them off the hook, whatever you believe.