Public Petitions Committee, 23 Jan 2001
Meeting date: Tuesday, January 23, 2001
Official Report
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Scottish Parliament Public Petitions Committee Tuesday 23 January 2001 (Morning)
[The Convener opened the meeting at 10:03]
I welcome everyone to this first meeting of the Public Petitions Committee in 2001. I welcome all the old members back. Of course, I do not mean old members—
Careful—I am sensitive.
I mean existing members. I also warmly welcome new members to the committee—Rhoda Grant and Dorothy-Grace Elder. I am sure that you will enjoy your time here. I was also to have welcomed George Lyon as a new member, but he has not turned up, so we will have to wait for that. I welcome George Reid and Scott Barrie, who are here to speak about today's second petition.
We have a heavy work load this morning. As well as the declarations of interests from the new members and the appointment of a new deputy convener, we have nine new petitions to consider. Three petitioners are here to speak about their petitions. We have also to consider 10 current petitions to which we have received responses. A new item on the agenda, suggested by the clerk, is on inadmissible petitions, and we have also to consider a paper on fraudulent petitions. As I said, that is a heavy work load. I ask members to be succinct and precise in their questions. If we do not try to be brief, we will be here until about 5 o'clock this evening, and nobody wants that.