Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Official Report
429KB pdf
New Petition
Burial Grounds (Scotland) Act 1855 (PE1415)
Item 3 is consideration of a new petition. PE1415, in the name of John Steele, is on updating the Burial Grounds (Scotland) Act 1855. Members have a note by the clerk, the Scottish Parliament information centre briefing and a copy of the petition. I invite members to consider the petition and ask them for views on the next steps.
I read what the petitioner said about
“a mass grave containing human remains from HMS Dasher ... in Ardrossan Cemetery”
and am certainly in favour of continuing the petition. The University of Glasgow was commissioned to look at the matter.
The petition is interesting. The Scottish Government has gone some way to looking at varying the legislation and updating the 1855 act. I would like the petition to be continued. We should write to the Scottish Government to ask it what its views are on the petition and whether it has any plans to review and update the current law in relation to burial grounds. Whether it does or does not have such plans, we should ask it to provide the committee with its reasons for its approach.
I totally agree with Sandra White. We should write to the Scottish Government to ask it for its views on the petition. We should also write to a couple of local authorities to ask them for their views on it. In particular, we should write to North Ayrshire Council, as it is named in the petition. We could also write to the City of Edinburgh Council, Highland Council and South Lanarkshire Council to get opinions. I am trying to think of local authority areas in which there are historic cemeteries that may be subject to disturbance.
There seems to be something strange going on, because the petitioner is being told that they cannot excavate the site as the legislation does not allow it, but it seems possible to do away with cemetery grounds in other areas to allow housing and other developments to take place. It would be interesting to ask local authorities whether they are aware of the legislation and whether they have had similar requests to disinter bodies or investigate sites where burials may have taken place.
Are members content that we continue the petition, write in terms of the clerk’s first suggestion and write also to the local authorities that John Wilson identified?
Members indicated agreement.