Public Petitions Committee, 12 Sep 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 12, 2000

Official Report 288KB pdf

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Convener's Report

I have no further reports. Do members have any other competent business?

Unfortunately, I must leave and cannot continue the discussion today, but next week I would like to have a discussion about our work. I do not think that we are much further forward in the way in which we manage the business of the Public Petitions Committee. I think that we are back to square one.

I am worried about petitions that get lost. Committee conveners are saying, "Don't give me any more petitions," and I know that the committees are overloaded. However, I think that we should examine where many of the good petitions have gone. What happened to them?

After spending an hour and a half on new petitions, I am exhausted and I do not think that I have paid due attention to the petitions that we have heard already and which we have passed on. I want to return to the discussion about how to resolve that situation. Two and a half hours is not a long committee meeting, but we spend that time trying to track 25 different subjects, which is mentally exhausting.

I am speaking from the point of view of petitioners—we have discussed this before 100 times, and I do not want to repeat those discussions. Is there any chance that we could have 10 minutes at the beginning of the next meeting to consider that issue?

Certainly.

To be fair to the clerks, this meeting was always going to be difficult because of the recess backlog. Summaries of what happens to petitions are issued to members and members do not have to wait until a committee meeting to raise points—points can be raised at any time.

I support Pauline McNeill. Apart from going through the current petitions that we uplift, there are loads of other petitions. I looked through them and thought, "I'd like to know what happened here." As part of our discussion next week, I suggest that we consider spending one meeting every so often on an audit of current petitions—like a housekeeping exercise.

In that context, could we also look at the bigger picture, to remind ourselves of some of the visitors we have had during the past year who have given us particularly good examples of good practice elsewhere? The European Commission representatives highlighted Germany as an example. It would be good if we could get a bit more information on the examples of best practice and on how other countries deal with petitions. That could be a desk exercise, unless Christine—

No, no—a visit.

We will set aside 15 minutes or so at the beginning of the next meeting to have a quick discussion in private about how to progress that aspect of our work. We are all tired—this is not the time to have that discussion. Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

I close the meeting.

Meeting closed at 16:25.