Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Official Report 477KB pdf

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Petition

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Essential Ferry Services (Governance) (PE1390)

The next agenda item is further consideration of PE1390, by Professor Neil Kay, which calls for the setting-up of an independent expert group to consider and recommend institutional and regulatory options in relation to the provision of competitively tendered Scottish ferry services under EC law.

The committee last considered the petition at its meeting on 5 October this year, when it agreed to question the Minister for Housing and Transport on the issues that are raised in it following the publication of the Scottish Government’s ferries review. Following that meeting, Professor Kay wrote to me to express concern about the way in which his petition had been processed and considered by the committee and to request that his petition be withdrawn. Copies of the correspondence, my reply and a further e-mail from the petitioner confirming his request that the petition be withdrawn are attached as an annexe to committee paper ICI/S4/11/8/3. I invite members to consider the petitioner’s request for the withdrawal of PE1390.

12:15

I have a couple of confessions: I do not know and have never met Professor Kay; and I have no great knowledge of or expertise in ferries—I do not know whether other committee members do; if so, I will bow to their knowledge. My concern relates not particularly to ferries but more to the Parliament, its credibility and the parliamentary process. I do not want to make a party-political comment—my comment is more parliamentary.

Professor Kay raises the significant issue that we dismissed the petition when the process presented us with selected information and we were given no rebuttals or contrary evidence. That is unfortunate. If we consider such matters again, my concern is that we must do so in the clear knowledge that we have all the information that is available.

I confess that my only intimate knowledge of ferries is from taking the Arran ferry regularly as a boy.

I hear what Neil Findlay says, but he is incorrect to say that we dismissed the petition. We did not dismiss it; we were actively considering it. We decided to defer our active consideration to a more appropriate juncture, further down the line. That was not unreasonable.

Like Neil Findlay, I do not know Professor Kay from Adam. I have read Professor Kay’s considerable correspondence back and forth with the committee and I do not really see what the problem is, to be frank. If he wants the petition to be withdrawn, I am minded to do that—that is his decision. However, we did not deal with the petition inappropriately. An element of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face is involved.

I apologise for using the wrong terminology. Jamie Hepburn is right—we agreed to consider the petition as part of the ferries review process.

Our decision was right. It was up to all of us as individuals to look back on the petition—I read the Official Report of the Public Petitions Committee meeting at which the petition was discussed. As we are all fairly new to the subject, it was absolutely appropriate for us to take the advice to consider the petition alongside the ferries review.

It is regrettable that Professor Kay has asked for his petition to be withdrawn, because discussing it in relation to the ferries review would have been relevant. However, we have a request from the petitioner to agree formally to close the petition and that is what we must decide on.

Although I have not thoroughly digested all the information, I understand that Professor Kay has significant issues with how the Parliament has handled the matter down the years and not just with how we dealt with the petition. Would it be appropriate to send his criticisms of the Parliament’s process to the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee to consider?

I was going to recommend that, too. Professor Kay said:

“All three documents—the grounds for the Petition, Transport Scotland’s response, were all ... posted under Petition 1390 ... But only one of these documents was ... produced as a background paper”

for us. That comment is significant. If other papers related to the petition, we should have had them, but we did not.

I agree with the route that Adam Ingram has suggested. Whether we send the information to the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, the Conveners Group or whomever, we must take the matter seriously.

He is making certain allegations about the way in which the Scottish Parliament does business and making disparaging comparisons with Westminster and the like. Those points have to be answered. We should not just let it go.

I think that you are right. The petitioner has had grievances, not with the Parliament but with the Scottish Government over many years, not just recently. Our decision was to consider the issues raised by the petition at the most appropriate time in our timetable. For that reason, it was not considered necessary to circulate all the material associated with the petition at that particular time.

Someone has selected what they deemed to be the relevant information, namely Transport Scotland’s contribution, but did not include the other elements. That is part of the problem.

We are dealing with two different issues: the time at which we were going to consider the petition, and the procedures that we go through. I agree with Adam Ingram’s view.

Would we have made another decision if we had had more material in front of us?

That is not the point, convener.

All of the information was available online. As far as I can recall, no one objected when we considered when to discuss the petition within our timetable.

Convener, the decision we have to make today is whether to allow the petition to be withdrawn. We are getting sidetracked by other issues.

Two different issues.

Let us decide whether to agree that the petition should be closed.

I do not think that we have any option.

Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Convener, can we send it to another appropriate audience?

I can ask the clerks to discuss the matter informally with the clerks of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee and the Public Petitions Committee to see if this has happened in the past. They could report back to the committee informally.

Yes. We need to be able to respond to Professor Kay’s allegations as a Parliament, Government or whatever.

When we get a report back, we should decide whether to take the issue any further. Adam Ingram has clearly said where he sees it going and I agree with him.

In the first instance, our clerks will speak to the other committees’ clerks about the way in which this particular petition has been handled and they will report back to us informally.

And then we will decide whether to do anything further.

Yes.

12:23 Meeting continued in private until 12:39.