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to see whether or not members feel that the remaining business on the agenda can be completed by 11 o'clock. If you think you can, you can carry on until 11 o'clock, but if you haven't finished the business by 11, then there is a, the meeting finishes at 11 o'clock and as you say, you come back the following Monday evening. Yeah. If I can just respond, I completely support Councillor Fellows wanting to discuss this. Maybe we could, to make sure we can have a full debate, include length of Council meetings on there as well, because I don't, what I don't want is we go, have a discussion about it and say, oh yeah, we think we should change it to 45 minutes. You can't do that because of Council rule, other one that isn't on the agenda. So I should suggest both of them should be on. Councillor Pugh. Yeah, thank you, Chair. I'd like to echo what Councillor Scobias says and particularly Councillor Fellows. I think in my time as a Councillor, and there are members in the chamber that have been Councillors on and off for longer than I have, I can't remember us ever really getting close to 10 o'clock, let alone half 10 or 11 o'clock. I mean, I think once we got to about quarter to 10, maybe half nine, I'm thinking, you know, I just, I think that it is something we really need to discuss because particularly as Councillor Fellows said earlier, and we've all really agreed, you know, we've got rid of the September 4 Council meeting because of a lack of business that was voted on, I think, last year. And that's absolutely fine. But of course, we've now got less full Council meetings across the calendar year. So there's less opportunity for us and members of the public to ask questions, for us to put motions forward. And if we're able to extend the time, I just think, you know, it won't always be used, but I think it's just important really. As you've raised it, I'm going to indulge the meeting by repeating my favourite Council anecdote, which is that Council not too far from here, their constitution doesn't say the following Monday, theirs says the next day. And there was a planning meeting, and they got to 11 o'clock. And their chair insisted that the meeting be adjourned to the following day, and then kept everybody there until one minute past midnight, and then carried on straight away afterwards. Yeah, I would suggest not making that change to their constitution. Thank you for that, Nick. So looking at the recommendation that the committee note the content of the report, and secondly, the committee either agrees the topics proposed for its consideration during the following year, or it proposes amendments to those suggested topics, and/or the order it's proposed the committee consider these topics. I think it's safe to say that we want the time of meetings added to the September meeting. And I think that's about the only topic we're considering changing. And questions, yeah. Councilor Austin? This is probably going to be regarded as irrelevant, but I have asked in the past about changing slightly the way that we minute various meetings. I talked to the leader about it, he told me to bring it to this group, I brought it to this group. I think your response was that's not actually in the constitution, so it doesn't sit with this group. Can somebody just advise me how to progress that request, because there doesn't seem to be a mechanism by which we can suggest it. It was a very minor change about the way that different sorts of meetings are minuted. Do you want to make contact with me, email me and we can have a discussion, and we'll talk to Nick. Thanks. Councilor Creighton? Just to clarify, if we're discussing length of times motions as well, because I think it's Chair's discretion we can keep running over time, but we have had some very interesting discussions that have gone on and have needed to go on. But if we're going to review length of time, then we might as well do them all. Councilor Scobie? Yeah, I'd just like to completely agree with that. I think we need to look at this in the round about how all these pieces fit together, and I'm absolutely not of the view that we should increase everything. Everybody probably knows from now that I love a good meeting, so I'd quite happily stay as late as needed, but more is not necessarily best. But I will sort of agree that we should look at them in the round, so motions, petitions. And I think petitions is due to be on, is it November anyway? November. Yeah, so we can look at them in the round. So we've got motions already on for the 24th of September, and also petitions for the 12th of November. Sorry, Chair, should we amalgamate so that they're all in the same meeting, maybe in the September meeting, just to get it done? I just think they're all interconnected, really, aren't they? Petitions, motions and questions, the time limit for all of them. And they all go one after the other in the agenda for a full Council meeting. I wouldn't want to keep you after midnight. Do you want to remove one from the September meeting to the November meeting? Can I make a slight change on that, then? If the majority of this stuff is going to be picked up in November, let's do November, because I think the thing about petitions was very different. It was about the process of how petitions are gathered, how many numbers there are, and where it goes after that, because there's some issues. I raised this at the last meeting, because I was just concerned that if a petition is brought in in, say, the end of May, it has to wait till potentially September sometimes, or if it came in at the right point, it could have to wait like three or four months, and it's what the response looks like. So maybe we could look at petitions in September, the actual process, and then all the other way around. Yeah, I mean, I think, as I say, if we separate out, because motions, again, is about the process, similarly to the petitions thing. So if you want us to do an all-encompassing report on the length of the different individual parts of the meeting, I would suggest that we do that at the September meeting, and then push the motions, how it actually works, to the following meeting, if that's okay with members. Do we all agree? Councillor Crittenden? I was just going to say, I noticed that joint leaders of political groups is in bold for September, but is that worth moving down into November, if we're going to have longer? I've just asked the same question. It won't take, I know it's a famous last words, but it won't take us very long to write the report, I'll rephrase it like that. We've already got speech links including chairs' discretion, so we're rounding that out, and then we do the debate, so it's about lengths of everything, rounded out, motions, clarification of process, that will be a nice meeting, and then bump over the joint leaders. Correct me if I'm wrong, so in September we're going to have motions, petitions, and the joint leaders of political groups, and what about the speech length, is that going to be involved in motions? So September will be an all-encompassing report covering the length of each of the constituent parts of the council meeting, that's one item, then we'll have the joint leaders of political groups, because that won't take us very long to do the report for that, that's fine, and then the speech length bit we can bring back to the same meeting, because I think actually that's quite helpful with regards to the speech length, because obviously if you expand the amount of speech length or shorten them, that's going to have a major effect on the item. Was that what that was about? I thought that was related to committees, and speaking on committees. Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick on that one. Are you using the word chair's discretion? I don't remember from the last meeting adding that we were going to discuss speech length, but I may have missed that bit. No, I think actually to be fair, it's worth separating that out as well, because I think it goes back to the point that Councillor Crittenden was making, which is that what you've talked about is part of the separation of the rules for full council and the separation of the rules for everything else that we do, and that's like the frequency of the number of times people can speak in a debate and those sorts of things, where theoretically you're only allowed to speak once. So it's about identifying which are the rules in the constitution that apply to full council only and which don't. Because that's a big topic. That's basically at the moment the constitution doesn't say anything about what rules apply at committees, so the assumption is that effectively full council debate rules apply, and I think it's very much the view of the committee that we don't want that rule, but trying to set up something different is going to be complicated and big, and that probably needs a meeting effectively by itself. So do you want to clarify the full content of the next meeting that was used before we propose and second it? It's an all-encompassing report across the times of all of the different elements of the council meeting, the joint leaders of political groups and that speech lengths for actual lengths of speeches. It's mainly to do with the fact that when you introduce a motion or some items, some members get more time to introduce the same item than other members do, based upon what job they have. So it's looking at is that fair, or is it actually does everybody, should everybody get the same amount of time to put a motion in? That's what that specific speech length item is about. So I think we've clarified now what's going on at the next meeting. Can I have a proposer please? A proposer, yeah. Proposer Scobie, a seconder? Agreed. Agreed? Agreed. Not voted on. Okay. Agreed by the... Affirmation of the meeting. Affirmation of the meeting, yeah. That concludes the meeting. Members, thank you very much for attending. (bell dings)