Official Report 373KB pdf
Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Investigations (Transparency) (PE1538)
Good morning and welcome to the 33rd meeting in 2014 of the Local Government and Regeneration Committee. I ask everyone present to switch off mobile phones and other electronic equipment, as they affect the broadcasting system. Some committee members will use tablets during the meeting, because we provide meeting papers in a digital format.
Agenda item 1 is petition PE1538. On 25 November 2014, the Public Petitions Committee referred PE1538, by Dr Richard Burton and Peter Stewart-Blacker on behalf of Accountability Scotland, to this committee. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament
“to urge the Scottish Government to amend the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Act (2002) to ensure that complainants are shown all correspondence between SPSO and the bodies complained about before the investigation is concluded (including emails) and that they are also made aware of the content of any verbal communications.”
Members have the clerk’s note and links to the petition and the Official Report of the Public Petitions Committee meeting. Do members have any views?
The committee is invited to consider whether to look at the petition in the first instance as part of its scrutiny of the 2013-14 Scottish Public Services Ombudsman annual report at its meeting on 7 January 2015 and, in preparation for that meeting, whether to invite the SPSO to submit to the committee written comment on the petition. Are we agreed that that is the way forward?
Members indicated agreement.
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