The second item on the agenda is consideration of petition PE306, from Mr Thomas Minogue. We have considered the petition before, but we needed more information, which we have now received. The purpose of today's discussion is to decide whether we need to take any further action or whether we wish simply to note the petition. The clerks have prepared a note that suggests some options. First, we can note the response and agree to take no further action. Secondly, we can write to the Minister for Justice to ask him to consider whether the judiciary should be required to declare interests in the same way that members of public bodies are required to. Thirdly, we can write to the Minister for Justice to recommend further consideration of voluntary or compulsory declaration of membership of the freemasons as part of any judicial appointment reform.
I am attracted to the second option as I do not particularly want to focus on freemasonry. MSPs and our assistants are required to declare whether they are members of any organisations or have any interests, pecuniary or otherwise. It might be worth while exploring with the minister why members of the judiciary should not be required to declare that as well.
I agree with Christine Grahame. As I have said before, the issue is broader than freemasonry; it involves other organisations that might or might not have a secret basis. The paranoia over the secrecy within the freemasons sometimes puts people on edge, but it might be pertinent for people to place on public record their membership of certain other organisations. There might not be anything sinister about their involvement in such an organisation, but it should be out in the open, just as there has been greater accountability of people in many other areas of public life.
In the United States, someone was up in front of a congressional hearing because they had indicated support for one side or other in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. People will join groups called "Friends of" this, that or the next thing, so there is a wider issue to address.
It should also be noted that there is a slight difference of opinion in the correspondence that we have received from the Sheriffs Association and the Scottish Consumer Council. It is important to make it clear that the committee is not suggesting that there is a problem as far as sheriffs in particular are concerned. However, as the Scottish Consumer Council points out, the public have a certain perception of the matter. Whether that perception is justified or not is another question, but it is important to address the public perception problem. As Christine Grahame has rightly pointed out, the new Parliament operates in a spirit of accountability and openness, which includes declaring interests—although some might think that we declare too much. We should not drop the issue and I support Christine's suggestion that we should choose the second option.
We could be accused of being less than open ourselves. At the same time that we have a new and more open judicial appointments procedure, we seem to be closing the door on another aspect of openness. That is contrary to what is happening south of the border. It is interesting that, despite the much-vaunted opening-up of the public appointments procedure, the Minister for Justice does not consider this to be an issue, given what he has told us before and what the Sheriffs Association has said in its correspondence. The issue is worth further exploration.
If we choose the second option and write to the minister about the petition, is it worth adding the suggestion that, although we will have to examine the whole area of the judiciary, that is not necessarily the only area of the system that we would ask the minister to address?
I am sorry—I did not follow that.
Perhaps we should ask the minister why he is making a special case of sheriffs over everyone else in public life attached to the criminal justice system or judiciary.
The question is why the judiciary is being singled out.
We need to be true to the petition, which after all is what we are considering. We have moved far enough away from it by extending its scope beyond freemasonry. The register of interests is the important point. I would like to keep the focus more narrow and concentrate on the judiciary, so that we can pin the minister down more. We could ally that with Scott Barrie's point about having a more open appointments system. If we are to have such a system, what is the problem with a register of interests? I had to declare an unpaid interest as a member of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, which it was not a problem for me to do. If a sheriff is a member of that society, I see no reason why he should not declare it. As we know, everything in public life comes down to the perception of openness and any perception of impropriety lays foundations for the suspicion that there might be something to hide.
In our discussions about the international criminal court, we established that that will be a non-starter unless everyone trusts the absolute objectivity of the judiciary. Membership of, or support for, the most innocuous organisations in one country might be seen as very significant in another country.
Okay. It is of course in order for us to take the petition as the foundation for any issue that we want to pursue and there is nothing to preclude our adding anything to it. However, most members seem to agree that we should address the subject matter in the petition and choose option 2. Is that agreed?
Are members agreed that the letter to the Minister for Justice should emphasise that we are writing to him in the spirit of openness and accountability and because he is specifically considering the issue of judicial reform, and not because any problem has been identified in the judiciary?
What is the position with the Public Petitions Committee? Do we simply deal with the matter or do we report back to that committee? The convener and I were both members of that committee.
As you and I are previous members of the Public Petitions Committee, it is only right that we should not let a petition just disappear. We should advise that committee what we are doing as a matter of course anyway.
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