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Chamber and committees

Public Petitions Committee, 21 Sep 1999

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 21, 1999


Contents


Progress

The Convener:

The next item on the agenda is progress of petitions considered at previous meetings. Paper PE 99/3/2 lists the petitions that have been considered by the committee so far and provides details of the progress that has been made on each to date. I do not think that this is a subject that we want to debate at every meeting, but the information is there for members. Should any member have concerns about a petition, they will be able to raise them at this point on the agenda. This will be a regular feature of meetings.

I do not have the paper.

It is on the back of the agenda.

If I may be really picky, the petitions that are being considered by the Justice and Home Affairs Committee should be remitted to us, because I do not think that the committee has even seen them yet.

They were considered at the previous meeting.

No, they were not.

They were considered at our previous meeting and forwarded to the Justice and Home Affairs Committee.

Sorry, I misread the paper. I thought that

"Being considered by Justice and Home Affairs Committee"

meant that that committee was considering them.

No, it means that the petitions have been passed on for consideration by that committee when it has time.

I wanted clarification just in case you come back to us for results before we have seen the petitions.

No. How we monitor the progress that committees are making on petitions is another matter that we will discuss later in the meeting.

Will this list become shorter as our work proceeds, convener? PE 1 has now been dealt with—will that just drop off the list?

It is entirely up to the committee. I suggest that any petition that we decide not to send on will appear on the list for one meeting thereafter and then will disappear.

That makes sense.

The Convener:

However, petitions that are not finally resolved in one way or another should continue to appear on the list until they are resolved. That would be the best way to do it. As petitions are dealt with they drop off the list; otherwise they stay on it. Does anyone wish to raise any points on that? It seems not.