Public Petitions Committee, 12 Sep 2000
Meeting date: Tuesday, September 12, 2000
Official Report
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Scottish Parliament Public Petitions Committee Tuesday 12 September 2000 (Afternoon)
[The Convener opened the meeting at 14:04]
I welcome everyone to the first meeting of the Public Petitions Committee after the recess. I hope that everyone had a good recess, worked hard and is ready to get stuck in with work of the Public Petitions Committee.
Margaret Smith informed the clerk that she will not be able to attend the start of the meeting but will join us later. I understand that Pauline McNeill, the deputy convener, is convening a different meeting in the city chambers down the road, so she also will join us later. There are no other apologies. I ask anyone who has pagers or mobiles with them to turn them off, even if they are in silent mode, because they interfere with the broadcasting of the committee's work.
I remind members that we have a busy agenda. We have 13 new petitions to consider and seven groups of speakers will be speaking to them. We must also deal with responses to 15 current petitions and discuss the proposed visit to Glencoe, so it will be a busy meeting. I ask members to be disciplined. I ask members only to ask questions of petitioners and to leave the discussion until the committee has finished with the petitioners and has moved to the discussion session.
As members were warned in the correspondence that was sent out before today's meeting, to keep the meeting within a reasonable time frame, when we discuss current petitions I will read out the petition name and a brief summary of the response, then the recommendation. Only if anyone disagrees with the recommendation will we have a discussion. If members are disciplined and keep to that plan, we may get out of here in time to get home tonight.