Petitions Process Inquiry
Good afternoon, everyone. We have reached the critical time of 2 o'clock. I thank everyone who has managed to come along this afternoon, and I will allow the witnesses to introduce themselves in a moment. We have some specially invited guests, given that this is the Scottish Parliament's 10th anniversary year. The Public Petitions Committee should acknowledge the work that was undertaken by the individuals who are here today and by their organisations to prepare the ground for the new Parliament for 1999 and beyond.
Item 1 on the agenda is the inquiry into the public petitions process. It is a major item, and I suspect that it will take a wee bit of time to consider it, but I hope that there will be enough time to get through the key issues with which the committee wishes to grapple. However, it will be even more important to have a sense from the witnesses, who were key participants in the debate on the nature of the Scottish Parliament and the engagement that it should have with the wider citizenship of Scotland, of how they think that we should move forward over the next five to 10 years in terms of the role that Parliament plays in Scottish society.
I welcome back the members of the Public Petitions Committee after a two-week recess. Having spoken to them, I know that they have spent that time engaging with the communities that we serve regionally and at the constituency end. I hope that we have been so energised and enthused by our engagement with the citizens that we will take the debate on the public petitions process even further forward.
On housekeeping issues, I should say that we have virtually everyone who said that they would be here—one or two others might arrive later. Before we go into the formal business, I invite our guests to introduce themselves briefly, indicating the role that they played 10 years ago and their current role. We should start with one of the more senior former MSPs: former Presiding Officer George Reid.
I suppose that these days I am best described as a recovering politician. I was a member, with Campbell Christie and Alice Brown, of the consultative steering group, which set up the practice and procedure of the Parliament and sent it down the road of being a participative Parliament, with the sharing of power among the people, Government and Parliament. Perhaps we can talk about that a little later.
I was not as heavily involved as George Reid and his colleagues 10 years ago, but I might need some of the counselling that he has obviously had since he became a recovering politician, given that I am responsible for a Government that has only 47 MSPs out of a total of 129 MSPs. However, I am delighted to be here to contribute.
I have been involved over the past 10 years in the equalities field, working originally with Stonewall Scotland and subsequently with the Commission for Racial Equality in Scotland and chairing the Scottish equalities co-ordinating group, which worked closely with the Equal Opportunities Committee and a number of other committees of the Scottish Parliament.
Professor Ann Macintosh (University of Leeds):
I currently work at the University of Leeds, but I guess I am here because of my time at Napier University, where I was involved in the design and application of technologies to support citizen engagement with public policy. I was the original designer of the petitioning system in the Scottish Parliament.
Louise Macdonald (Young Scot):
I am the chief executive of Young Scot. I think that we bear some responsibility for the inquiry, so I am delighted to be here.
Young Scot is the youth information agency that not only supports young people with information but helps them to engage in debate and with their communities. I have a great deal of experience of working with a range of young people throughout Scotland, but I am particularly interested in the application of new technologies to engage young people.
My name is—[Interruption.] Does the microphone come on automatically?
Yes.
What a wonderful system.
It is one of the innovations that you recommended.
Can you cut it off automatically as well?
Yes. That was an innovation that we recommended.
My background is in the trade union movement. As general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress during the very interesting period from 1986 to 1999, I was around when a lot of the campaigning for the Scottish Parliament was going on. Indeed, I was for many years a member of the campaign for a Scottish assembly.
I was also the chair of the Scottish Civic Assembly, which became the Scottish Civic Forum, about which I will say something in relation to the work of petitions. Along with George Reid, Alice Brown and Joyce McMillan, I was part of what I have always remembered as the constitutional steering group but whose proper title was the consultative steering group. That was an interesting time.
I look forward to contributing to this afternoon's discussion.
Rosemary Everett (Scottish Parliament Public Affairs Group):
Since 1999, I have worked for the Scottish Parliament on implementing services for the public. At the moment, I head up the new education and community partnerships team.
As part of our scrutiny of the petition that has led to this inquiry and our wider engagement with the public, the committee has in the past six or seven months visited different parts of Scotland. Indeed, we still have to arrange one or two more visits. Our aims are to open up the debate about the reach of the petitions process; hear people's experiences of it; and look at how, 10 years on, it might be improved.
In previous outreach sessions, members have been set questions, but I think that this afternoon it would be appropriate for members to come in on issues that matter to them. Before we pitch in with our questions, I give our invited guests the chance to open the debate by giving their perspective of the situation 10 years on. What are the important things that we should hold on to, and what do you think could be improved? It would certainly be useful if you could give us a wee sense of that.
I see that Bruce Crawford wishes to speak. Do any of the other witnesses wish to make any suggestions before I let in the Minister for Parliamentary Business? [Laughter.] To be fair to Bruce, I point out that he has already had a chat with me on certain issues and I know that he can make a substantial contribution to this discussion.
The first thing that I would say is that we are all quite a bit older now.
The petitions process has been going for 10 years; it might not seem like it, but that is quite a long time. I should also point out that when I talk about the electronic petitions system I am not simply referring to the technology, which, as we should remember, is tightly bound with the committee and its processes.
Before we make any criticisms of the current system, we should not forget that, in the past 10 years, there have been a number of amazing successes. When I think about all the other Parliaments from around Europe that have come here to see the petitions process and talk to you about it, the one that stands out is the Bundestag. It spent a number of years contemplating what you are doing here before finally deciding that it was the right thing to do. It now has its own petitions process and system.
Over those 10 years, the people who have championed the process in different ways have come and gone, as is the nature of such things. As a result, the process and the technology have developed in an ad hoc way, which is to the disadvantage of the petitions process. The Parliament was leading citizen engagement because of the Public Petitions Committee and its processes, but other Parliaments are about to overtake you or have already overtaken you, which is a terrible shame. I go to the Basque country next month, and the Basque Parliament is moving ahead with both processes and technology. The technology of the Scottish system is old and does not excite people any more. Ten years is an awfully long time. We have moved on to social networking sites and web 2.0; it is time for the Parliament to move on, too.
I do not think that we can talk about public petitions and citizen engagement without considering the whole engagement process. I remember the exciting outreach work that Rosemary Everett led in the early days. It is not just about getting people to the Parliament these days. People—particularly young people—use technology in such a way that they expect the Parliament to come to them. They talk about public issues in their own space, whether that is Facebook, MySpace or wherever. They are really involved with the issues and no longer want to feel that they have to go formally to the Parliament—they want you to listen. The engagement that you now need to consider, therefore, is going out to those sites and listening to what is being said there. You might also bring some of the new technologies into your own site.
I would build on some of that. As I was thinking about coming here, having one of those daft-lassie conversations with myself on the train, three simple questions kept coming back to me. The first is: who are we trying to engage with and who are we currently engaging with through the process? Looking at the 2007-08 equalities report for the committee, we know that still only a relatively narrow group of people engage with the public petitions process, and they are in some of the easiest-to-reach groups, which most public engagement processes reach. We are still missing many women and younger people—as I say, we are engaging a narrow group.
The second question is: what are we trying to do? Accessibility, power sharing, accountability and equal opportunities were the four founding principles of the Parliament. We have done quite well on some aspects of accessibility, but we now have an opportunity to review how much power sharing and accountability there is through the petitions process. There is a temptation, over a period of 10 years, to focus on honing and improving the process and systems, while forgetting the end for which the system has been set up and spending less time in thinking about the purpose of petitions and, more important, their impact. I reiterate what Ann Macintosh has just said about the great opportunity to see petitions as just part of public engagement. Public engagement involves a wide range of things that offer either technological or human solutions, such as groupware, group deliberation, collaborative software, citizens' juries and deliberative polling. Perhaps petitions should be seen simply as a part of that.
The third question is: which aspects of what happens now could be improved and which should be celebrated and kept? What needs to be done differently—not just to improve the existing model but to build out in a quite different direction?
The committee has a very good reputation internationally. As I travel around Parliaments in North America and Europe, I find that overseas parliamentarians look to Holyrood rather than Westminster. Everyone should be grateful that our consultative steering group made the Public Petitions Committee a mandatory committee, which built in a structure and a secretariat that most other Parliaments do not have. The follow-up that is done by the committee is remarkably effective compared with the follow-up that is done elsewhere—for example, at Westminster—so good on you.
The importance of the Public Petitions Committee's work has been in informing debate, informing members and raising issues. From time to time, it has also changed regulations and laws. As all will remember, moments in time past include: those abused as children in church homes, to whom Jack McConnell had to get up on his feet and apologise; burnt babies, which led to changes in thermostat controls; and the smearing of sewage sludge in Blairingone, where a community that had been polluted by noise and smell is today clean and pristine. Where a direct connection exists between citizen engagement and activity that produces results, people believe in the process. One reason why the people of Scotland, in survey after survey, trust this Parliament more than Westminster is that degree of engagement.
Of course, there are groups that do not engage, including young people to a large extent. I understand that the committee's work comes mostly from middle-class men of middle-class age, and some disadvantaged groups are not being reached. Therefore, I applaud the work that the committee will do on community engagement. Getting into social networking sites and so forth is one possibility, but in my view that will be slow-burn work. It will not happen by magic overnight; it will take time.
The more important thing, 10 years on, is that we look at the extent to which the citizen in this Parliament has, under the current public affairs dispensation, become the customer. We should look at performance indicators and paradigm shifts. To some extent, those have involved a move away from a fundamental principle for this Parliament—as Campbell Christie will remember—which is that this Parliament belongs to the people of Scotland. Therefore, any breakthrough cannot be achieved just by this committee working in a box. You are riding point, but much wider work is also required from across the whole Parliament. All Parliaments get stale if they do not redefine and revivify themselves. Much more could be done by marching off the edge of the old map and into new participative measures.
One thing that the consultative steering group was very clear about was that we have two models of democracy in the United Kingdom: the classic Westminster model of representative democracy, which dates back to the industrial age; and—what we have tried to have in this Parliament—participative governance appropriate to the 21st century that involves the sharing of power. Those two models are reflected in the two buildings: the Palace of Westminster is grand, patrician and set apart; this building is domestic and invites the people in.
This committee's work in getting through to marginalised groups could be buttressed in some areas. As Campbell Christie will remember, Crick-Millar—Bernard Crick and David Millar, who produced the "Standing Orders for a Scottish Parliament"—suggested things that were thought too radical at the time. For example, they suggested that, if the Public Petitions Committee received a petition with more than 50,000 signatures, the petition should immediately generate a bid from the committee for a debate in the chamber. On a number of big issues—for example, on carers or the Cod Crusaders—there was a real case for saying that the committee should automatically ask for time for a committee debate. Another possibility, which is always available, is that the committee introduce its own legislation.
Lastly, we are talking about not just the Parliament but new democracy throughout Scotland. I find it fascinating that clauses 13 to 16 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill, which is currently in the House of Lords, will make it mandatory for local authorities in England to set up a petitioning system, whereby people named at local level will be required to appear before an overview and scrutiny committee. Would that not extend democracy in Scotland and free up the work of this committee? At each meeting, you currently deal with something like eight petitions, many of which would be perhaps better dealt with at local government level. I know that in the constituency of the Minister for Parliamentary Business, Stirling Council has started to consider petitions, but I think that only two local authorities in Scotland do that. We should get back to principle and rethink procedure.
I recall the motivation to do something about a petitions committee. Having trudged to Downing Street on numerous occasions to deliver boxes of petitions that had been laboriously signed in the streets and knowing that those petitions were never seen again once they were handed in—nothing was ever done about them—some of us thought that it was important to have a petitions committee that was part of the structure of the Scottish Parliament and which took citizens' involvement seriously.
In the papers that we received for this meeting, the first question that we were asked to discuss was whether the system is working as envisaged. The answer is probably that it is working as envisaged. If I were still in the same position as I was in the mid-1990s, I would endorse Unison's submission to the committee, which says that everything is good and is going well, because people in trade unions or organised bodies in society know about the committee and will have the expertise around them that enables them to make use of it. However, life has changed for me over the past 10 years. I am now retired and am no longer involved with the trade unions to the same extent, but I am president of Age Concern Falkirk, honorary president of the Central Scotland Race Equality Council and chairman of Raploch Urban Regeneration Company, and I am involved with Raploch community forum and the Forth Valley sensory centre, which has very good facilities for those who are deaf, those who are hard of hearing, those with visual problems and so on. My constituency has therefore changed dramatically.
For this discussion, I talked to all of those organisations about how they see and use the committee. I am not saying that the Royal National Institute of Blind People and the Royal National Institute for Deaf People are not involved with the committee, but at the level of people on the ground—I almost said "on the shop floor"; I suppose that such terminology sticks with me—there was no knowledge about the committee, how it works or why someone would use it. I understand the importance of the technological developments, but it is important that we do not leave behind a big group of people who are a bit frightened of technology. Many older people will use technology, but technology and the communication through it are not the be-all and end-all.
There is no doubt that technology is the future. Online petitioning to the committee and the way in which the committee communicates are among the dramatic changes that have come about. Someone who accesses the committee's website can get information on where their petition is, how it is being handled and the advice that has been given to the committee. That is a huge step forward from where we started, but the petitions system is a long way away from representing true civic activism, which should be the objective.
The petitions system is hugely better than the Westminster system and hugely improved from the early days but, if we want real civic activism, we need to consider the evidence that has been submitted. The civic forum was trying to promote the idea of the Parliament having outreach workers working with the people I am talking about, on the ground, on how they can be involved in petitions, in responding post legislation and so on. The civic forum's role was to be the means of communication with the Parliament and civic Scotland. For whatever reason, that was not seen as being appropriate, but there still seems to be a huge gap in our outreach work. For the middle class and the middle aged who use the petitions system—someone said grey men in grey suits; I had to ensure that I was not wearing grey today—that is okay, but there is a big part of the population with which we are still not communicating.
I thought that the geography would change things but, when I went up to Inverness during my period with the STUC and I talked about "down south", I was talking about London and the people there thought that I was talking about Glasgow and Edinburgh. We still have a big area that we have to cover and we still have big gaps in how we engage citizens. The committee is to be congratulated on its work—it wants to listen and to involve people, and I am hugely heartened by that—but there is a long way to go.
Obviously, Young Scot's interest is in young people. I previously stated an interest in how technology can be used, but technology is not the only answer; it is part of the picture. If we are an aspirational, ambitious Parliament—which I believe we are—we must be ready for that kind of future. Technology should be a really important part of our thinking.
We have to recognise that the majority of young people are now essentially digital natives. They have never not known computers and mobile phones. I was talking to a teacher the other day who says that every time he walks into a classroom and tells young people to switch off the mobile phones, computers and so on that they have with them, he feels that he is switching off their engagement—he is closing them off to that open engagement. Technology is very much their world. Wanting the engagement of young people is not about excluding other parts of the population or excluding young people who do not have access to technology. In fact, I suggest that, if the Scottish Parliament drove forward a digital agenda, it could help to equalise access to those technologies for harder-to-reach groups.
In Young Scot, we are interested in all of that. We recognise that it was the work of a group of young people who were involved with Young Scot at the Microsoft Government leaders forum a couple of years ago that started a petition that is part of this inquiry. We have been involved in all kinds of discussions with young people about how technology can be used to engage in their communities.
Among the young people whom we talk to, we have noticed a great deal of excitement and a real sense of privilege when they get an opportunity to link with the Parliament. There have been a number of occasions on which we have considered having an event in the Parliament and the team we are working with has said, "Oh, you don't want to take young people there. It's all very stuffy." However, the young people love coming here—they love engagement with the Parliament.
That sense of young people, and how they see the Parliament, is an incredibly powerful tool. It is about relevance, place within young people's lives and being where young people are, but it is also about young people seeing that they can influence things.
Technology really gives us an opportunity as part of that picture. That reflects the petitions process itself. Lodging a petition is a collaborative process whereby a group of citizens get together, identify an issue and present the petition. There are really exciting collaborative tools, which Ali Jarvis mentioned, such as digital software, which allow people to collaborate. Look at how the discussions about Susan Boyle have taken off overnight. There are loads of other examples of how technology can allow people to collaborate on issues. The spirit of the Parliament and of the petitions process can be reflected in the use of technology.
We have discussed some ideas with young people through social networking platforms—not so much Facebook, because we will only really find one another on Facebook, but on Bebo and other such places. On collaborative tools and enhancing the e-petitions process, we talked about having e-democracy points in public libraries. All those things are possible, but it is also about involving young people, getting their ideas and allowing the boldness and creativity that they have to come through in developing the use of technology.
Feedback loops are also important and tie into the whole purpose of the Parliament in showing young people that they can influence things and effect change. We have been involved in work with young people on bank accounts and, on the basis of their evidence, we managed to persuade the Committee of Scottish Clearing Bankers to accept Young Scot cards when young people want to open bank accounts. The young people who were involved in that work wondered what else they could achieve—it was about showing them that they have made a change.
I have a final point on social networking. I know that that can be a bit difficult, and having the Scottish Parliament set up a social networking site might not be the way to go. However, establishing some mechanism by which you can have a presence, build a community or be there for young people is something to look at. We have a presence on social networking sites, but it is not about delivering a service through those sites or making all our material available there. It is about saying to young people, "Did you see that episode of ‘Hollyoaks' last night? Oh my goodness! Did you see all that stuff about the eating disorder? Wasn't that terrible? Did you know that there's a service that can help with that?" Similarly, young people talk all the time on message boards about what an issue transport is for them and how lack of transport means that they cannot access opportunities and services. Is there a way of being in that space and saying, "That's a really interesting issue—did you know you could all get together and put in a petition about that and it would be heard?"? It is about being in those spaces. We are interested in exploring that within the spirit, aspiration and innovation of the petitions process in the Parliament.
This is more fascinating the more you get into it. It is invigorating to get away from my usual front-line activity to have a discussion such as this.
I congratulate the CSG on what it did in setting pretty fundamental foundation stones for the future and making a great place for us to lift off from. We have heard a fair number of suggestions today about how things can be improved.
The research that was undertaken in 2006, to which others have referred, shows that petitioners included a disproportionately large number of older, male, middle-class people, that the majority of petitioners were educated to university level and that a high proportion were already actively involved in other areas. For many people, the sheer effort of relating the skills of reading and writing and learning the petitioning process can be a disincentive. How do we overcome some of those disincentives and involve people from the harder-to-reach groups, for want of a better term? I am glad that the Public Petitions Committee is considering those issues, as now is an appropriate time to do so.
Next week, the Government will launch our consultation document on values in young people, which will deal with how we deliver services that reflect the reality of young people's lives; how we recognise and promote young people and the contribution that they make in our society; and how we can involve younger people earlier. Louise Macdonald got us on to the track of younger people issues, but she probably hid her light under a bushel a bit, given what Young Scot does, so I will take the opportunity to talk about that. The Public Petitions Committee could usefully tap into some of Young Scot's work. For instance, it has links with many smaller organisations of young people; it supports vulnerable young people; it has generic publications that reach almost every young person; and it has active engagement methods and a European links process. There is no reason why the Public Petitions Committee cannot link directly to Young Scot's activities and, thereby, reach many more people. Obviously, the committee can go directly to young people through social networking sites, but it would be useful to involve Young Scot.
Is there any reason why the committee cannot have a regular petitions slot every year, or perhaps twice a year, dedicated to young people? You could do the same for other groups. Could the Scottish Youth Parliament be encouraged to have a petitions committee and a process for involving young people? It could bring petitions to the committee. I could make several more suggestions in relation to the harder-to-reach groups, whether they are disadvantaged people, ethnic minorities or people with disabilities. However, rather than take up time discussing those specific issues, I will write to the committee.
George Reid picked up on one potential approach that the convener and I have already discussed, which is the possibility of more debating time in the Parliament. I am more than willing to discuss that. Stretching that further, I am also willing to discuss the committee being involved in the legislative process. Obviously, in considering any proposed legislation from the committee, we would need to be resource aware, and the proposal would probably need all-party support. However, the Government would be more than happy to consider empowering the Public Petitions Committee to bring alive some of the issues that come to it from the groups that engage with it.
As I said, it would be great if we could get beyond the usual suspects and into the harder-to-reach groups, whatever part of society they are in. Otherwise, the process might be dominated by the things that we all expect. It would be nice to find something exciting and novel that we had not really expected—something that would change people's lives in just a small way, but make a huge contribution to Scotland.
I invite committee members to raise issues of interest or concern.
I have several issues to raise—I have been taking notes furiously. Ann Macintosh talked about some of the positives that have flowed from the public petitions process. We would all agree with what she said, which has been echoed by other contributors to our inquiry thus far. However, she also mentioned a couple of concerns. She said that ad hoc development has disadvantaged the committee or the process and that the process does not excite people any more. She talked about the need for citizen engagement and for the Parliament to come to the citizens—she mentioned Facebook and MySpace. I am interested to hear her thoughts on how we would balance that lack of formality with the formality of a parliamentary process. How do we excite people about the public petitions process?
Ali Jarvis asked three questions of herself on her way here, but she did not give us any clue about her initial response to her third question, "What next?" What does she consider should be the next step or steps?
George Reid talked about the two models of democracy. He said that the Westminster model of representative democracy was rather staid and old-fashioned: I agree. He talked about participative democracy and the sharing of power at Holyrood. I agree on that, too, but does he think that there might be a contradiction between participative democracy—people engaging is an essential part of what this Parliament is about—and the fact that, ultimately, the decision on how accountable we have been rests with the electorate four years hence? Those two things are not exactly the same.
Campbell Christie said that civic activism is essential. He mentioned the Scottish Civic Forum and said that, for some people, it has not been the right model, whereas for others—including himself, perhaps—it has been the right model. However, he said that a gap remained to be bridged. I invite him to elaborate on how that should be done.
Louise Macdonald talked about engaging with young people, which is her job, her interest and her passion. We engaged with young people about three weeks ago up in Fraserburgh, when we considered two petitions from two sets of students at Fraserburgh academy, who I think were all in their second year. Their contribution to our discussions was praiseworthy. The performance of one young man who talked about international aid and international development was especially noteworthy. It was not just the fact that his presentation was so outstandingly good; it was the fact that he knew his subjects inside out and was able to respond to questions with an astonishing maturity. It certainly made all members of the committee tremble to think about themselves at that age.
I accept that we need to talk to young people as digital natives—I am so old that I did not even know that that was the new jargon, but I thank Louise Macdonald for giving me the phrase. I do not particularly like it, but never mind. How do we get round the fact that, although young people can use the net to obtain information, there has to be a formality about the process? They have to be able to assimilate information, structure it and propound arguments. How do we go about ensuring that young people can do both those things, which are not necessarily contradictory? Those are just a few thoughts.
Beyond that, there was not much. I want to hear from two or three other members before I invite guests to add their thoughts.
I want to return to a simpler level. I am certainly not a digital native—I am not a digital very much, I have to say.
At a meeting that I attended in Aberdeen, it was brought home to me just how remote we are from certain groups. There must have been about 60 people at the meeting—the room was pretty full—from ethnic minority groups. Aberdeen does not have an enormous ethnic minority population in comparison with some other parts of Scotland, but there was keen interest in the meeting. I mentioned the Public Petitions Committee and the fact that it was trying to communicate with more people. The person who was chairing the meeting said, "Before we go on, how many people here know what a petition is?" About two hands went up. With certain groups of people, we have an extremely basic communication problem to overcome. I do not know whether Ali Jarvis has any suggestions about how we can do that; I do not. I was struck by the fact that we are a long way from communicating effectively with certain people, whether through technology or through human contact. We must do it somehow.
I was interested in what George Reid said about councils setting up petitions committees. The Public Petitions Committee has thought about the issue, and I think that that could make a significant difference to our role. We are getting overburdened by the work that is caused by some petitions. I am not saying that we should not be doing the work—it is absolutely right that we should—but perhaps we could find other ways, such as petitions committees in councils, of dealing with work that should not necessarily come to Parliament.
Another issue that we have yet to touch on is that a number of petitions that come to us are on reserved matters, rather than devolved matters. There are different views among committee members, and we have anguished about whether we should work on those petitions or not. I would be interested in hearing the views of other members.
I will follow on from what George Reid and Nanette Milne said. I have addressed this theme briefly before, and I would be interested in hearing people's views on local authorities having their own petitions system. Local authorities have busy timetables, and that can exclude a lot of things that should be addressed. However, it is only because the local authorities do not know that issues exist that the issues are not being addressed. The basic point of the petitions system here is that it alerts us to what people are feeling, to problems that we do not know exist, and to problems that we know about but do not know how badly they affect people.
The question that we should consider is not why we are receiving petitions that need to be addressed more locally. The question that we should consider is this: if so many issues that we should deal with are coming to the Scottish Parliament, how many local issues are there that are not being dealt with, when it would be appropriate for councillors to have their attention drawn to them? On the principle that devolution did not stop at the Scottish Parliament, petitioning should not stop at the Scottish Parliament, either.
If we want to be connected with the movement of ideas, as a Parliament should be, we will have to be brave enough to consider the investment that will be required. The present model is based on the model from 1997-98, but it is 2009. Things should change every two or three years.
We should not forget the authenticity of the Parliament chamber, which represents the bringing together of elected members. If we are not careful, we might uninvent the purpose that we are meant to serve—scrutinising the work of the Executive, or ministering in the country. There is a real issue affecting the legitimacy of Parliament. Although I welcome wideness and openness in trying different things, we should ultimately be saying to people that Parliament belongs to the people of Scotland and that things of importance happen here.
A third point relates to the mechanics of how we engage with people. Youngsters who have made presentations to us have been great, as have youngsters in audiences, but teenagers feel an understandable ambivalence towards people of our age talking about issues that relate exclusively to teenagers' interests and needs. Two or three youngsters were horrified at the idea that we in the Scottish Parliament might have our own, supposedly cool, Bebo site. It does not really bear thinking about.
However, if we do not do something, we will be disconnecting from a substantial section of the population—people who are young now, and who will not always be young. They will be using that technology and whatever is invented 10 or 15 years hence. We might exclude a whole generation of people because we do not think imaginatively about what we do.
There is another perennial problem that, to be fair, the committee is finding it harder to solve. We all know who can petition Parliament and who can navigate the decision-making corridors of local and national Government. Many of us here might have started in the social group that allegedly cannot access and navigate those corridors, but a combination of good fortune, hard work and education has allowed us to do a bit better in that regard than people from our background have been able to do before.
The fundamental issue is that we have a real challenge in finding out how we can reach the hard-to-reach groups. I am sure that every organisation at local and national levels is grappling with that. However, we have a bigger commitment to that because we were predicated on a different set of principles compared with other parliamentary structures in European democracy, which were constructed from a combination of compromise, power and strength, and the fact that some people could batter people more effectively than others. We started with a very different model that evolved from a late 20th century concept of what a parliamentary structure should be, despite the fact that many of us who were involved in that debate might have found it a tortuous process.
I am interested in getting the legitimacy of the Parliament recognised, while acknowledging that we need to open up the Parliament much more. I would like to get a sense from the witnesses of how we should do that. Bill Butler, Nanette Milne and Robin Harper have touched on a number of points and I have thrown in a few. The witnesses should feel free to respond to some of those general points.
I found it interesting to hear you talking about public petitions and local authorities. When I was in Scotland, I tried desperately hard to move the petitions system into local authorities in Scotland, but I just kept hitting a brick wall. I managed to get the system into a few local authorities in England. I could not do it in Scotland, although I think that it is needed here. If the committee could take that forward, it would be brilliant. However, the committee might want to take the reformed petitions system that it is considering to local authorities.
On the lack of people who know about the petitions system, I know how hard Rosemary Everett works on that because I have worked with her over the years. It is difficult getting people to know about the petitions system. Again, by going to the local level, we could start to let people know about local issues and the local process, then let them know about the bigger process at parliamentary level.
Ultimately, increasing awareness depends on champions who want to push citizen engagement. George Reid talked about participatory democracy, which is what we want. However, that is not done just through the petitions process but through a range of citizen-engagement processes. Considering how to revise the current system provides a great opportunity. Let us open up the remit, make it much wider and consider the different types of engagement process that we can have.
It takes a lot of effort, however, to increase awareness. I have been doing research into successes and failures, and have found that one of the key successes is always the willingness of somebody in Parliament to champion the system and push it forward. Such people's wanting it to happen—rather than the technology and the process—is what makes for success.
Bill Butler asked me what I meant when I said, I think, that the system is cumbersome now.
You described it as being "ad hoc".
I have not been on the petitions system since I have been away. I went back on to the electronic system the other day and—
Be candid.
It is boring. It is slow and boring, and it has mistakes in it. I am talking not just about e-petitions but about the whole content management system. The convener might be alarmed to hear that I pressed the back button on the screen—or one of the buttons—and it told me that John McAllion is still the committee convener.
Do not worry about it. That will be sorted at about 5 o'clock tonight.
The website is not alive any more. Nobody is going to sit and wait while the screen takes that long to refresh itself. When we first considered the e-petitioning system, we did not have web 2.0, social networking sites and blogs—we have moved on. The committee has an opportunity to move on with that, make the system more exciting and perhaps attract more people that way.
Very good. We will take up a couple of those recommendations immediately.
Not only has the method of delivery moved on, but social attitudes are changing. George Reid talked earlier about the reasons for some of the differences in attitude between the Parliament in Westminster and the Scottish Parliament. What we have done in Scotland is to be applauded, but we are considering a broader attitude towards political engagement. I looked at some of the surveying that the Hansard Society does every year with Ipsos MORI. The latest survey, published in December 2008, found that 43 per cent—less than half—of British adults wanted
"to be involved in decision-making in the country as a whole"
whereas, the previous year, 69 per cent agreed to a slightly different question and wanted
"to have a say in how the country is run".
A downward trend in desire for engagement is being played out in a number of areas. The Hansard Society survey is only one example of it. Against that backdrop, the work to engage people has to be doubly exciting, doubly relevant and seen to be doubly effective and impactful. That is because people are not necessarily predisposed to engage; if you are going to get them to do so, something must make it interesting for them and it must be seen to be worth while.
I will pick up on Nanette Milne's point about the group of people in Aberdeen who did not know what a petition was. I could give the slightly facetious answer that perhaps it does not matter. It may be that we have got a little bit too hung up—perhaps I should not say this in the Public Petitions Committee—on petitions as the mechanism for engagement. If we talk about a petition being simply one way to engage—to have a say, make a difference and address things we care about—communication will become easier because we will become less involved in explaining to people the niceties of the system for submitting a petition and more involved in making them desire to participate per se. One question that we must weigh up is whether we should communicate better and harder something that, in itself, might be a bit dull, or should we widen out the communication so that we get people wanting to engage and seeing a purpose to it?
When I looked through previous years' Official Reports of the committee, I wondered about a conceptual petition life journey. Who submits the average petition and what do they expect when they submit it? We do not know petitioners' motivations, but what can we draw from what happened, how long it took, what feedback there was and what changed at the end? The most compelling examples that George Reid gave first made me think, "Yeah—this is really worth doing," because I could see a concrete benefit and how the petition had made a difference. What percentage of petitions are we able to say made a difference and really changed people's lives? Did they all just go through a process and never get anywhere? If people are going to engage, they have to see the impact and see that it makes a difference not only on the process but on the issue that they are trying to address.
That brings us back to the legitimacy of the Parliament. Is this the time to start exploring whether the committee should become a public engagement committee rather than simply a Public Petitions Committee? That would allow you to start drawing together a range of things that enable true accountability, accessibility and power sharing to take place in a way that is not simply channelled through one system—a petition.
I will follow the idea of a public engagement committee, rather than just a Public Petitions Committee. I recall that there were two elements to our thoughts when we discussed the proposal for a Public Petitions Committee. One was the genuine feeling that, if people felt sufficiently strongly to want to petition the Parliament, that should be considered to be important and, therefore, that we should have the petitions arrangements that we have.
However, we also had quite a debate about the involvement of citizens in consultation on legislation. We all know how such consultation works—this is, at least, how it used to work—with big tomes of proposals being sent out to people, who are given four weeks to respond. The responses come in only from organised groups. Does that involve the citizen to any great extent? The answer—I do not know, but I suspect—is largely that it does not.
One question that was posed in the background paper—this was also posed to the committee in its review—asked:
"does the petitions system currently represent true civic activism?"
I do not know what exactly is meant by that, but if the question is whether the current petitions system is the holy grail of civic activism, I would say that it is not. We need to consider how we can achieve wider involvement in proper discussion about proposed legislation and about existing legislation that upsets people and needs to be changed.
I note that one proposal in Carman's report suggested that there should within Parliament be a public outreach specialism, whose role would be to look not into Parliament but outwards to civic society. That would be a pretty big job if the aim is to ensure that wherever people gather together in numbers—for instance, the Forth Valley sensory centre brings together people who are blind or have hearing difficulties—those who work with them have the resources and understand how representations can be made to Parliament about proposed legislation and so on.
Frank McAveety said that we should recognise the resource issue. Resource is an issue. If we genuinely want civic participation, people here really need to work harder to ensure that—not just at national level, with trade unions and so on, but on the ground where people who have problems meet—the Parliament can send people out to participate with them in their discussions. If we had a petitioning arrangement in local government, that might start to create a way in which such matters could become more understood and more apparent to people at local level.
On the legitimacy of debates in the chamber, I do not know—I do not watch Parliament's debates often—to what extent the whipping system allows genuine discussion and debate. Certainly, I would be anxious that we should have such debates. Public participation should not prevent genuine debate taking place in Parliament by people who represent their communities. That is an issue that should be addressed.
I will continue from the points that Campbell Christie and Alison Jarvis made, and ultimately come to Bill Butler's question about who decides.
In listening to the discussion, it occurs to me that our first petition ever was probably a line of the Lord's prayer: "Give us our daily bread."
Some people are still waiting.
That is the point. In a society in which people are marginalised, disadvantaged or have learning disabilities, their first preoccupation must be with their daily existence. It would be absurd to look to a society such as that of ancient Athens, where every citizen stood up and engaged in the political process. What we can do is reach out as best we can, through the outreach programme that is being undertaken and through a refresh of the present e-petitions system, which is looking very tired. However, as I said earlier, it is going to be slow-burn stuff—it will take time and will not result in massive change.
The one thing that we have identified in the course of this discussion is the need to get back to principles. Any democracy needs a demos—a community that is united by common social values and in which power is vested. That takes me right back to early discussions in the consultative steering group that ran as follows. There are two concepts of sovereignty in law in these islands. There is the Westminster concept—a figment from the civil wars—that sovereignty is vested in the Crown and Parliament. There is also a much older tradition in Scotland that sovereignty is vested in the people. That tradition is not 100 years old; it is almost 650 years old. Robert the Bruce won Bannockburn, but if he had been a bad king the people would have got rid of him. That doctrine was developed by John Major, the medieval philosopher, not the politician, and George Buchanan.
Another model for us, which impacted on the CSG's understanding, was that of twa kings and twa kingdoms. There was the democratic right of the state, but the church, representing civic society in the 16th century, had a right to impact all the time. The tradition continued through the national covenant, the disruption and straight through to the claim of right that was the progenitor of the Scottish Parliament: sovereignty is vested in the people.
The problem these days—touching on what was said about engagement—is that elections are a crude system of determining popular will. The old ideological certainties have gone. People are engaged more than ever, but they are engaged in issues rather than the political process, so it is inchoate and floating. I would have thought that that would be fertile territory for the Public Petitions Committee.
It would be wrong just to look back to 1999. I occasionally hear presentations about the Parliament in which it is presented almost like Moses coming down from the mountain. We are told the four principles that the Parliament is built on. However, we walk into the future looking backwards if that is all that we say—we look at our future through a backward-looking telescope.
Donald Dewar said that devolution is a process, and it must be a process in terms of the procedures of the Parliament as well. That is why, if you want to think really constructively about how you build that demos, a lot of what comes here should go to local authorities. They will not like that—councillors and local authority officials do not like being called to account—but surely, if we are talking about a democratic Scotland, we should invest in that. Governments can do that. I say to the Minister for Parliamentary Business that, in that respect, England is now ahead of Scotland. We should think about that.
At Westminster, petitioning is all about numbers. I do not particularly agree with that, but I think that the Parliament could deal differently with big petitions, such as that of the Cod Crusaders or petitions on knife crime or carers. Any petition with more than 100,000 signatures should go straight to the Parliamentary Bureau for parliamentary time and the committee should institute a debate on the subject. I am glad that the minister was reasonably supportive of that proposal.
I have talked about Crick and Millar. They went even further, taking up the wider points of democracy. Their suggestion—which was too radical for Donald Dewar at the time, but he said that we might come to it later—was that any 1,000 duly certified signatures that were sent to the Parliament, addressed either to a committee convener or to a minister, should generate a written response in the Official Report. They also suggested that any 10,000 duly certified signatures should trigger a debate in Parliament. You will see where I am starting to go. The new democracy in Scotland is a rolling process, and 10 years down the road it is about investing power in the people. These days, politics is too important to be left just to the politicians.
I come finally to Bill Butler's point. The buck has to stop somewhere. It has never been all power to the people. The fourth principle was always the sharing of power among the people, the Parliament and the Government. The petitions process and other participatory forms of democracy inform members, but at the end of the day they must stand up and press their button at the appropriate time. The consequences for them come at the next election, but by taking the petitions process into account they can adopt a much more informed approach. Who knows—if we go down that road there might be much more consensual, cross-party decision making, which lies at the heart of the Parliament but has never quite come through.
Ann Macintosh said that people no longer find the petitions system exciting—a point reiterated by Bill Butler. Is the point that we, who have known about the system all along and have experience of the various petitions that have been submitted, no longer find it exciting? Perhaps telling people about the system is more important than making it exciting—today, we have spoken a great deal about the fact that we cannot reach certain groups.
Three things suggest that people still find the petitions system exciting. The first is Louise Macdonald's point that young people see engaging with the Scottish Parliament—not the Public Petitions Committee specifically—as a great opportunity and find it exciting. The second is our trip to Fraserburgh, about which other committee members have spoken. In Fraserburgh, speaker after speaker got up to say how worth while they found submitting their petition and how the system had worked for them—they gave glowing reports. Perhaps the people who have experience of the system are excited by it, but we know that we are not getting through to enough people.
Something else tells me that people still find the petitions system exciting. I have been a member of Parliament for only eight weeks. People ask me about my job, but they also challenge me all the time by asking—as they often ask politicians—what I actually do and what the Parliament has to do with them. It is mainly members of my family who do that. When they complain about things that they are unhappy about, I tell them, "If you feel that strongly about it, why don't you approach the Public Petitions Committee?" I have said that to many people over the past eight weeks, but most of them know nothing about the committee. My personal polling indicates that they are very excited when they hear about it.
One issue that we are considering is how to make the process more interesting for people when they are engaged in it. I may be contradicting my argument that people who are engaged in the process are excited by it, but we could consider making certain changes. At the moment, only some people are allowed to speak to the Public Petitions Committee. When I worked for an MSP, someone complained bitterly to me that he was not given the opportunity to speak about his petition. Although the system had been explained to him, he still thought that he would be able to speak for a short time. We may want to consider that.
I am not arguing against making the process more exciting or doing things to make submitting a petition a better experience. Ann Macintosh suggested that we should make things easier for people when they go online. They should not have to wait five minutes for a page to refresh itself—I know that I would not wait more than five seconds, but I am an impatient person. George Reid said that Stirling Council is one of only two councils that have a petitions system. It is not all about geography, but Campbell Christie made the point that for people in Inverness, down south is Glasgow and Edinburgh, whereas for us it is London. Bringing democracy closer to people works. We should consider doing that.
Ali Jarvis suggested that we should make the process much more worth while and look at the life of petitions. We have talked a lot about young people, but we have not discussed in detail other groups that we have mentioned in passing. I would like to consider the groups that we are not reaching and how we reach them. One of the most important things that we can do is make the process worth while for people and look at the lifetime of petitions. If the people whom we spoke to in Fraserburgh talked to people who know nothing about the committee, they would provide perfect examples of how worth while the process is. Ali Jarvis's point was important.
We will pull together the discussion for the last 10 minutes.
I will make a few points in response to what has been said. I came to an event in the Parliament at which someone said there are no hard-to-reach people, only hard-to-reach services. The issue is not that people are hard to reach, but that services are not designed for people. Perhaps a shift in our thinking is needed, so that we do not always think that other people are hard to reach.
One key issue with any group is working in partnership and not thinking that one group has the answer. What has worked is collaborative working with many groups on the ground, whether they work with minority ethnic communities, young carers or others. Some organisations have developed expertise in working alongside such groups, which involves considering what a partnership can offer those groups. For instance, when we do street work, we do not just go out and about; we work with experts such as Includem and Barnardo's.
Some changes in local authorities, such as the re-emergence of community planning partnerships, offer a great opportunity to engage all groups. From the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and our partnership with all 32 authorities, we have formed the sense that champions exist and that renewed vigour is felt about engagement, what it means and how it can be reflected in single outcome agreements and so on. It has certainly been our experience that an opportunity exists to have a conversation with local authorities about that. I am aware that I speak from the point of view of working with young people, but such points can be expanded.
I am delighted to hear about the committee's Fraserburgh experience, but I am not in the least surprised by it. I am in a privileged position at Young Scot, because we hear from young people and most days have experiences like the one the committee had. We are always incredibly impressed by what young people have to say and to offer.
That ties into the idea of the continuum, which Bill Butler talked about, from someone reacting to a piece of information or having a view through to informed participation, not just by a young person but by an MSP or other elected representative, for example. Everyone around the table has had many months in which to reflect on the petitions process, to hear from different people and to access evidence and research. To give young people the opportunity to consider issues in that way, we developed the local investigation team model, which involves teams of young volunteers throughout Scotland. We used that model in relation to financial services and a consultation on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and young people. Under that model, local groups of young people throughout Scotland are given a set of questions to reflect on for two, three or four months and are asked to go out into their community to ask their peers, their family, their local MSP, their local councillor or whoever for their opinions. We then bring all the groups together for a national discussion day, when they share their expertise and what they have learned and produce recommendations. That allows young people to have informed participation. We are developing that with the new online consultation tools that we are building in Young Scot, which will reflect the journey for those who want to react to something straight away and those who want to take time to consider and reflect and to talk to others to help inform and shape their view.
In addition to the issue of informed participation for all, engagement should not just be something that happens, in the case of some of the electorate, every four years. Can we reach a position where people engage in debate and discussion every day, and their views are regularly sought? That would mean more than people just getting an opportunity to vote and having their opinion heard via the ballot box. How do we engender debate and discussion every day? I am thinking about the fact that young people could be allowed to vote in health board elections. That would contribute to the sense that young people are being shown that they can get involved in such things all the time. I hope that that answers the point about informed participation.
Lastly, many of society's organised groups have fragmented, and are being replaced by online groups and communities. Many young people are finding communities that way, as well as in their own streets. It is about having a presence in all those places and in all aspects of young people's lives.
Robin Harper is next, and I know that Bill Butler has a point to add. Other committee members who have not yet contributed may do so. I am conscious of the time—I know that the minister has other commitments this afternoon.
I entirely agree with George Reid: giving the petitions system greater clout is a great idea. If a petition attracts 10,000 or 50,000 signatures, for instance, it could automatically result in a parliamentary debate, with a commitment from the Government to take things further. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that one person's petition has exactly the same clout as a petition from 60,000. That is the jewel in the crown of the accessible system that we have set up. The huge majority of the petitions that have successfully gone through the committee and followed various routes, including letters simply being sent to public authorities, have resulted in huge and significant changes to service delivery.
Consider the postcode lottery in cancer treatment drugs, which was addressed mainly by the public pressure that the committee brought to bear on health boards, using the evidence that we gathered. Petitions do not even have to be discussed in the chamber—the process can be too slow. In that example, the petition did not even go before the Health and Sport Committee; this committee addressed the matter and applied pressure on its own. People must be taught that this is a powerful and influential committee, given how it can affect public life in Scotland.
I like the idea of a co-operative share in democracy—whether a petition gets one or 60,000 signatures, it does not matter. That is great. I will let in Bill Butler, and then Nigel Don, but I really want to conclude soon after that.
I agree with what Robin Harper said about cancer drugs such as cetuximab. It is horses for courses—we needed to act expeditiously in that case. I say to Louise Macdonald that I welcome young people voting in health board elections, and funnily enough I welcome direct elections to health boards, which are long overdue.
I am interested in the local investigation model that Louise Macdonald briefly described. As she said, it could be a good model for informed participation. However, I caution her: my experience of community planning partnerships does not allow me to be as enthusiastic as she is. There is a good case for saying that the influence of local community activists has lessened. I agree, and would argue the point with anyone. We need to examine that issue some time in the future.
I agree with much of what George Reid said, and I agree about local authorities being, I hope, persuaded—I do not mean forced—to be part of the process when it is appropriate. That is subsidiarity, as Campbell Christie said.
We could, as George Reid suggested, have a system in which a petition with 1,000 signatures would elicit a written response and one with 10,000 would trigger a parliamentary debate. I hope that the Minister for Parliamentary Business and the Government will take that idea on board. I agree with George Reid on the different concepts of sovereignty and its being vested in the people versus the Crown and Parliament. I prefer a civil war example, but it is the example of the Levellers, who were unsuccessful. However, with major issues such as carers, hepatitis C and perhaps cetuximab—or perhaps not, given that we had to act quickly on that matter—such a system would be a good way of proceeding.
There must be a realisation that power needs to be shared. In that respect, I again agree with George Reid. We must not pretend to people that they will have the same democratic mandate as an elected member. For a start, people will not believe us. However, as Ali Jarvis made clear, they want to engage with the political process. That is why I would like to know the terminology that was used in the two surveys that she mentioned. As I recall, she said that 43 per cent wished to be involved in decision making, which, of course, is less than the 69 per cent of people who wished to have engagement. I think that those figures are quite easy to explain, because although people might want to be part of the process, they might not want to have the same engagement as full-time elected politicians. Providing the opportunity to be part of the process, improving the process itself and trying to reach harder-to-reach groups are what the committee is about.
I would be grateful if those who are involved in the discussion could say something about reserved issues. My view is that, where there are overlaps—as in the case of asylum seeker schoolchildren—the Government at Holyrood, with its devolved responsibilities, and that Parliament down there at Westminster, with its reserved responsibilities, need to work together. That is why I welcomed the agreement that our longest-serving First Minister, Jack McConnell, reached with Westminster in March 2006. To be absolutely fair, I make it clear that the present Scottish National Party Government has taken forward that agreement, which is the way we should go. We should not simply say that just because a matter is reserved we cannot touch it. As with so many issues, there are overlaps.
Just a few thoughts, convener.
I thank everyone who has contributed to the discussion, which has made for an hour and a half of good listening and concentrated wisdom. I just wish that I could spend every hour and a half of my time as an MSP in such good company.
It can be arranged.
Probably the major lesson that I have learned is that we need to work hard to reach what are known as virtual communities, by which I mean groups that do not live next door to each other and do not have to meet to work but that, one way or another, coalesce through the web and other media. However, if we succeed in significantly increasing our contact with the outside world, we will make work for ourselves. We could meet every week, but it is worth making clear that committee members take their responsibilities quite seriously and work quite hard. We have an awful lot to read even now; having twice as much would simply tax us. Alongside thinking about better ways of reaching out to the rest of the world, we will have to consider how to handle all the information and input that we will receive.
As Nigel Don said, it has been useful to get a history lesson of the Parliament, and I found George Reid's history of democracy very interesting.
With regard to the suggestion that local authorities set up petitions committees, I feel that the public petitions process should be extended to all public and statutory bodies in Scotland. After all, a number of the petitions that we have dealt with in the past year have involved health boards and other public bodies—although I would always protect the committee's right to accept petitions from anyone on any issue.
Bill Butler commented on reserved issues versus devolved issues. I would defend vigorously people's right to bring reserved issues to the committee, for us to discuss and deal with as appropriate. If people take the time to present a petition to the Parliament, it should be treated with courtesy and dealt with appropriately. If that means crossing the boundary into reserved issues, we should do so. Bill Butler gave a good example of that.
The committee has got out and heard extremely useful contributions in Duns, Fraserburgh and the east end of Glasgow. One of the lessons that I have learned from the process—it is perhaps a lesson not only for the committee but for the Parliament—is that we have to take ourselves out of Edinburgh occasionally to listen to people throughout Scotland so that we not only engage with people on public petitions but bring the democratic process closer to the people of Scotland, no matter where they are.
Campbell Christie spoke about going up to Inverness and down south, by which he meant London, but for many people in the north of Scotland down south is Edinburgh and Glasgow. We have to take those lessons and, I hope, the lessons that we have learned today and throughout the inquiry back into the parliamentary process. We have to think about how we will deliver the type of democracy that we are trying to achieve in Scotland.
Thank you. The minister has to leave—do you want to make any final comments?
The discussion has been fascinating, but some of the things you are talking about will be resource intensive and there may be an argument for not reinventing the wheel. There are organisations that people are involved in, such as Young Scot and organisations in the ethnic minority arena, that are already addressing many issues of civic engagement. They are already trying to build up confidence, abilities and advocacy roles in the communities they support. Rather than reinvent the wheel, the committee could use that expertise. The committee does not need to do everything itself; there are lots of organisations that can help you. I would like to leave the committee with that point—and I will write to you about the organisations that I have mentioned.
Thank you. That was helpful.
Are there any final contributions, particularly from our invited participants? You have raised a number of big issues—I thank you for that. Ali Jarvis and Campbell Christie are indicating that they wish to say something.
If issues crop up later, when you are reflecting on the meeting, we are willing to acknowledge them—it would be preferable if you e-mailed them to us. We are so hip-hop with the technology.
I make my apologies as I have to leave.
On you go. Thank you.
I want to pick up on something Ann Macintosh said and refer to the committee's 2006 report about what petitioners felt about their petitions. Although 63 per cent of respondents thought that their petition was handled fairly, only 30 per cent thought that their petition had been a success, 54 per cent did not rate their petition a success and, overall, 55 per cent of petitioners were not satisfied with the outcome. There has been a lot of work since then and a lot might have moved on, but it is important to measure that work. Last year, a letter was sent to 183 ethnic minority and equalities organisations, pushing the message. It would be interesting to know whether anything has changed as a result. Perhaps one of the issues is not how we can better communicate what is here but whether the product is still right for the marketplace of the citizens.
I wanted to get the minister before he left. He is absolutely right: there are organisations that are working in this area, but they require resources. Many of them are working on a shoestring, which means that they have a limited ability to deliver the sort of role that we are talking about. Although the minister is right that it is not necessary that a resource based in the Parliament should seek to assist people, resources will have to be found for organisations that are already on the ground, which often live hand to mouth.
It remains for me to thank the participants in the discussion for taking the time to come to the meeting. Some of them have come quite a distance to be here. We genuinely appreciate that.
We need to explore the issues that Ali Jarvis has just raised. Sometimes, the committee cannot easily resolve or even properly or fully address an issue that has been raised in a petition because the nature of the petition or the petitioner predetermines that, but we should endeavour to get underneath the subject material and find out how we can make the process much more acceptable and get outcomes that people understand as having dealt with the issue or made things better.
Ann Macintosh touched on the final point that I want to stress. The process is like anything else in life; personal testimonies are important. I keep telling my son and my daughter how good I am for them, but sometimes they need to tell me that. I do not think that I will get that from them now, although I might get it from them in 10 or 20 years' time. The point is that we need testimonies. We received very good, unsolicited testimonies when we visited Fraserburgh—it was not a matter of people producing things earlier for our benefit. People genuinely had issues and felt better because of how they had been dealt with and how the committee had handled matters. That was helpful. However, the strong message was that people know that we are moving on.
I will finish on a point that George Reid rightly touched on. That we created a piece of history in 1999 is important, but we cannot keep looking back over our shoulders. The real challenge lies in what to say to the younger generation in particular. That generation does not know about and is not interested in the battles about the Parliament that many of us around the table fought with one another and beyond. We have to try to re-explain key moments such as the anniversary of the miners' strike, the changes in Governments and the role of Mrs Thatcher. No matter how many of us lived through those periods and big issues, they are like ancient history to 14 or 15-year-olds. How we deal with that generation is a big issue.
I would welcome views, as I am sure members of the committee would, from the participants in the discussion and any agencies with an interest in the petitions process on how to progress matters for the next 10, 15 or 20 years so that the committee can do something for future parliamentarians that they will think benefits their work. Whether there will be a Public Petitions Committee then or a public engagement committee or a citizens committee—that may be interesting terminology for some of us in light of our backgrounds—those views will be worth exploring.
We have a tight schedule. We would like to produce something prior to the summer recess, so the next couple of months are critical. Members are discussing the broad outline of a paper, but we need to explore a number of issues further.
Is Bill Butler indicating that he wants to express a view?
Not at all, convener. As always, I am in complete agreement with you.
Good. That will be in the Official Report. That is the first time in 25 years of partnership between Bill Butler and me that we have been in complete agreement.
I thank people for their participation in the discussion. We will now take a short comfort break before we deal with the other items on the agenda.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—