Contents
- Attendance
- Scottish Trauma Network
- Provisional Common Framework on Food and Feed Safety and Hygiene
- Subordinate Legislation
- Petitions
Petitions
NHS Centre for Integrative Care (PE1568)
Whistleblowing in the NHS (PE1605)
Community Hospital and Council Care Home Services (PE1710)
Item 13 is consideration of three outstanding petitions that remain on the committee’s desk. Members will have seen the clerk’s note regarding the Public Petitions Committee’s request for any outstanding petitions to be considered and disposed of by the end of the month. PE1568 is on funding for, access to and promotion of the NHS centre for integrative care; PE1605 is on whistleblowing in the national health service and a safer way to report mismanagement and bullying; and PE1710 is on community hospital and council care home services in Scotland.
Colleagues may want to address the petitions individually We should acknowledge that we are approaching the end of the current parliamentary session, so it might therefore be appropriate for us to discontinue consideration of petitions from this session. Some of the petitions raise issues that may be brought back to Parliament in the next session in a more up-to-date petition.
I note that the Public Petitions Committee, in my understanding, is reviewing the process for presentation of petitions to committees, so the process in the new parliamentary session might be different from the process for the current one. I raise that point to ensure that members are aware of it. It means that, at this point, we might be able to close some of the petitions, but if there are questions that still need to be answered in relation to them, the process for doing that might change.
That is an important point, which is reflected in what we have seen from the Public Petitions Committee and its suggestion that we dispose of the petitions now in order that its successor committee will have a clean sheet and be able to address issues with new petitions in the new parliamentary session.
As someone who was on the Public Petitions Committee for a number of years, I have a concern. It has always been the case that petitions are carried forward into the next session. As Emma Harper says, the PPC is looking at whether that will remain the case.
I have received a note regarding Catherine Hughes’s petition; the cross-party group on chronic pain unanimously agreed that it does not want that petition to be closed. What would be the implications of not closing that petition? Would we have an opportunity in this parliamentary session to make any further progress on it? That is the crux of the matter.
It is, and the short answer to your last question is that it is very unlikely that this committee will have further consideration any outstanding petitions during this parliamentary session. As members know, we are rapidly approaching the end of the session and the committee must still deal with a number of items of business.
The implication is that it is open to this committee now to close the petitions, and it will be open to the petitioners, with or without support from members of Parliament, to submit new petitions in the new parliamentary session that cover any aspects of a previous petition that have not yet been addressed. That will offer the future Public Petitions Committee a tidier way to deal with matters, and will allow petitioners to submit something that is more up to date and relevant than a petition might be after it has been lying on the table for some time.
I fully support what you saying, convener. As a member of the Public Petitions Committee, I can say that time is very short for that committee. That approach would allow petitioners to bring back petitions, probably in updated versions, in the new parliamentary session to allow the PPC to look at them again.
That is clear and appreciated. We move to formal consideration of the proposal to close each petition.
Do we agree to close petition PE1568?
Members indicated agreement.
Do we agree to close petition PE0165?
Members indicated agreement.
Do we agreed to close petition PE1710?
Members indicated agreement.
We will therefore report back to the Public Petitions Committee that we will not consider those petitions further, and that we look forward to hearing, in due course, what new arrangements will be put in place.
12:39 Meeting continued in private until 12:56.Previous
Subordinate Legislation