Public Petitions Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, June 16, 2016

Official Report 314KB pdf

Convener

Item 2 is our choice of convener—I am sitting in this position at the moment only by dint of age; there we are.

The Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish Labour Party are eligible for nomination as the convener of this committee, so I understand that Johann Lamont is the party’s nominee for the post. Is that correct?

Absolutely.

Johann Lamont was chosen as convener.

Thank you. It is quite nice to win an election, even if there is only one horse in the race—it is something of a relief. I thank members for their support and recognise that it is a real privilege to be able to convene the Public Petitions Committee. It is a particularly important committee and I look forward to working with you all.

I pay tribute to Michael McMahon, the convener of our predecessor committee. He is obviously a good friend of mine, but he was also a fine parliamentarian and we can learn a lot from what he did about how to work on a cross-party basis.