Procedures Committee, 11 Jun 2002

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 11, 2002

Official Report 166KB pdf

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Committee Meetings (Evidence Taking)

We were invited to discuss taking evidence from people who attend formal meetings. Since the paper was produced, it has been suggested that several conveners and perhaps George Reid might wish to talk to us about the matter. I suggest that we include the item on the agenda of our meeting in a fortnight, unless anyone wishes to raise anything urgently today. We will continue the item and see who wants to talk about it.

Do we need to take further evidence because people have contrary views?

No. The basis for saying that people should never appear unannounced at a committee meeting is that the committee's agenda and the names of witnesses are published on the Parliament's website in advance and so should never be changed.

It is a bit ironic that, after our paper was published on the website, we were asked to allow additional people to speak to it and have a big discussion about it. Those people propose to do precisely what we said that they should never do. I therefore thought that it would be better for proper notice to be given, so that any member who had a contrary view could attend and influence our discussions. Any members of the public or the press who have a feeling about the matter might want to participate, too. I do not know.

I was not prepared to be bounced at a couple of days' notice into having people at a committee meeting. I thought that we should continue the matter, give proper notice and let everybody have the opportunity to think about it.

Unless we know that there are contrary views, I am not sure what merit taking evidence will have.

There may be no merit in taking evidence. However, if the clerking department asked to speak to us, we would listen. We have never said to anyone who wanted to speak to us that we did not want to speak to them. We have always been receptive to people who want to speak to us.

If the convener of the conveners liaison group and a couple of conveners want to come to speak about the paper, I am perfectly happy to allow that. However, I did not think that it was right, given the thrust of what we were arguing, that I should have received an e-mail last week asking for this item to be added to the agenda once the papers had been produced. I thought that that was a wee bit of an own goal.

The item will be continued in a fortnight's time. It may be that people do not want to come and give evidence. However, if they do, they should be allowed to.

I want to raise another matter, convener. I remember that you involved a member of the public who was attending a meeting in the discussion of the matter in which they were interested. That seemed to be sensible and I do not think that committee conveners should be prevented from acting sensibly. I take the point that, for instance, if you called from the gallery a person who was against fox hunting, you might have to call people with different views and the meeting might develop into a rammy. However, it would seem foolish to prevent the convener from inviting people to participate when they are in the room and can improve the quality of the information and the discussion.

Between now and the next meeting, we should raise with the promoters of the paper the question whether their concerns about big, angry public meetings might not be better addressed in guidance than in standing orders because of the point about flexibility that Donald Gorrie raises, which might ultimately be considered to be the crux of the matter.

I urge caution. I absolutely support the need for public participation, but only in an environment that ensures equal access for all. For example, some people are less able to get to Edinburgh than lobby groups are, because of public transport problems, for example. There is an issue about equality of opportunity. A tenants association in Springburn has less opportunity to attend committee meetings than one in Edinburgh does. People in my constituency raised with me the issue of the transport costs that are involved in participating in a Public Petitions Committee meeting, for example. We want to include the public, but who are we talking about when we say that?

Increased public participation would help the Parliament in many ways and I see the point that Donald Gorrie is making, but it is difficult to ensure equal access. People who are motivated not by community interests but by lobbying interests might be tempted to use the public gallery as a means of lobbying MSPs.

That is an important point. The promoters of the paper are not trying to prevent public access; they are simply trying to define how it should happen and to empower conveners to control a public meeting that might run the risk of being captured by an unrepresentative minority. The issues are to do with how that can be done and the degree to which standing orders should prescribe when people can and cannot participate formally in a committee meeting. There are many issues that we need to consider carefully.

I point out to Paul Martin that the tradition of the Edinburgh mob hijacking parliamentarians goes back several hundred years. We should do our best to respect tradition.

We should not be too literal in our interpretation of that tradition, because the Edinburgh mob usually ended up parading the heads of politicians on pikes about the streets.

That concludes today's meeting. I thank members for their attendance.

Meeting closed at 10:54.