Procedures Committee, 21 Jun 2005

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Official Report 236KB pdf

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Public Petitions (Admissibility and Closure)

Item 3 concerns remaining issues on the admissibility and closure of public petitions. There have been further discussions with the clerk and the convener of the Public Petitions Committee about the discussions that we had at our previous meeting. I am generally content with the overall approach that we made, but Mr McMahon was keen to retain the requested new criterion of admissibility to deal with repeat petitions. Do members have any views on the issue?

I support the Public Petitions Committee in that view.

The fourth paragraph on the last page of the letter from Michael McMahon refers to paragraph 25 of a paper that was circulated previously but which, unfortunately, I do not have with me. Michael McMahon states:

"However, I am not of the view that there is a need to state explicitly any specific reason for closing a petition."

My view is that there should be a requirement to state explicitly the reason for closing a petition, given that in effect—and I understand our reason for doing this—we are taking away the requirement for the Public Petitions Committee to examine every petition that comes before it. In some cases, that would be done for good reasons, because repeat petitioners slow the process down for everybody else. However, if a committee is to be allowed to close a petition simply because the petition is on an issue that has continually appeared on its agenda, it is right that the committee should say why it has closed the petition. That is only reasonable. If the reason is that the petition is the 23rd such petition to appear on the agenda, so be it. However, we should not depart too far from the principle that was adopted at the outset, which is that the Public Petitions Committee should hear every petition. If we close a petition, we should say why we have done so. That is not a particularly onerous task.

I am reasonably relaxed about which way the committee should go on the other issues. However, when the Parliament takes an action to restrict somebody's right to do something, it should explain why it has done so.

Do members agree with the reasonable point that Bruce McFee has made? Do they also agree that we should introduce the requested rule change? The new criteria will be slightly tighter than those that were originally requested.

Members indicated agreement.

The report also raises a couple of additional minor issues. Are members content with the recommendations on petitions in other languages? The recommendations will mean that the whole petition need not be translated if it becomes apparent early on that the petition is not competent.

Am I right in thinking—I read that part of the paper only once, so I am not sure—that the concern about the current wording on petitions in languages other than English is not so much that it entails translation costs but that it requires the Public Petitions Committee to consider every such petition, whereas the committee will not be required to consider every petition that is made in English? Was that the thrust of the argument?

Yes.

The other recommendation is that we should clarify that the Public Petitions Committee does not need to produce a report on every petition. That simply reflects current practice.

Are members content with those two recommendations?

Members indicated agreement.