Public Petitions Committee, 14 Jan 2003
Meeting date: Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Official Report
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Convener's Report
Although the first item on our agenda is new petitions, I seek members' permission to move the convener's report to the head of the agenda, so that Dorothy-Grace Elder may report on the visit last week of the European Parliament Committee on Petitions concerning a public petition that we considered previously.
Members indicated agreement.
Welcome back, convener.
The visit of the European Parliament Committee on Petitions was highly successful. Members may recall that the Scottish Parliament received a petition from the people of Carntyne on the cattle incinerator that operates in their area. Our system dealt with the petition well and referred it to the Transport and the Environment Committee. The conveners of both the Public Petitions Committee and the Transport and the Environment Committee were most helpful. Fiona McLeod was appointed as a reporter on the petition.
At the same time, I took the matter to Europe. Only when the Committee on Petitions delegation arrived did I find out that the odds against any petition to the committee succeeding are roughly 1,500:1, because the committee handles more than 1,500 petitions per year. The odds against a delegation being sent are many times greater than that. As a delegation was sent, one cannot say fairer than that.
The Committee on Petitions decided in July last year to send a delegation after I presented it with the evidence against cattle being incinerated in a highly built-up area and pointed out that no other cattle incinerator in Europe operated in such an area.
Last week, the delegation arrived and questioned everybody who needed to be questioned, including the head of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Scottish Water and Government ministers in Edinburgh. The delegation also spoke to supportive MSPs, including the constituency MSP, Margaret Curran, who is against the incinerator. There was a huge meeting in Glasgow city chambers, which was chaired by the Lord Provost. The delegation visited the cattle burner and Paterson's dump. The members of the delegation—members of the European Parliament from Spain, Wales and Austria—were hands-on, mud-on-the-boots, professional people who showed a genuine human concern for the people of Glasgow. At the end of the visit, the members of the delegation agreed unanimously that the incinerator should never have been located in that area and that they would recommend to Brussels that the incinerator be closed. They will contact the Westminster Parliament and are prepared to take the matter to the floor of the European Parliament if necessary. Further, if a sensible political solution is not arrived at shortly, they are prepared to take a legal route.
The exercise has brought the two Parliaments much closer together. The delegation was the first on the subject of pollution and the process could lead to Scotland's rules on pollution being tightened—we have had other petitions on that matter. I am grateful to the European Parliament and to the Public Petitions Committee for the efforts that have been made in relation to this matter. In that regard, I make particular mention of David Lowe, the European Parliament's equivalent of our clerk, Steve Farrell, who was part of the delegation. I close by raising once again the fact that the European Parliament Committee on Petitions has a 40-strong secretariat, whereas we have only part of Steve Farrell slogging away.
I suggest that I write to the European Parliament Committee on Petitions on behalf of the Public Petitions Committee to thank it for the work that it has carried out and to say that we look forward to further co-operation between our two committees on issues of joint concern.
We should also record our congratulations to Dorothy-Grace Elder, who has pushed this petition from the day it came before us. She has played a considerable part in the process.
Absolutely—the odds were a lot more than 1,500:1 when she started, but that is nothing to Dorothy-Grace.