Public Petitions Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Official Report 318KB pdf

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New Petitions

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Marriage (PE1413)

Item 2 is consideration of new petitions. There is one new petition to consider today, which is PE1413, in the name of Amy King, on preserving marriage. Paper 1, which is the note by the clerk, refers members to the Scottish Parliament information centre briefing and the petition. I invite the committee to consider the petition and the briefing, and to discuss what action to take. As always, possible options are set out in the note by the clerk.

I welcome the petition that is before us today. It would be normal practice for me to argue that we should give it a good airing. However, given that the matter is subject to a Scottish Government consultation, of which we await the outcome, I respectfully request that we put the petition on the back burner until the Government has released the consultation result. We can then bring the petition back to the committee, along with the consultation response, for further discussion. If we do otherwise, we may pre-empt a useful and interesting debate that may take place once the Government has released the consultation result.

I wish that John Wilson would not steal my speeches. I support what he said. This is a valid matter, but it has been subject to a very heavy consultation and the Scottish Government is considering it. It is a question of timing, and I do not think that now is the right time. We should perhaps advise the Scottish Government of our interest through some mechanism, find out what the outcome of the consultation is and consider the matter at that point.

I was not going to come in on the petition, but I feel that, as the petition is before us and the petitioner is here, we should hear about it. There is no legislation at present, but a consultation has been conducted. After listening to the petitioner, we could then write to the Scottish Government to ask it what its thoughts are and what responses it has received. There is not necessarily a huge number of people for us to write to, but we could still write to the Scottish Government.

I note that the petitioner has, along with a huge number of organisations and individuals, fed into the consultation process that is taking place. Looking at the clerk’s note and in relation to the possibility of seeking information, I think that, although we could write to the organisations that are listed in the note to ask for their views on the petition, we could probably give their views here today—their responses to the issue that is raised in the petition are no secret. This is a particularly divisive issue, and people are generally either on one side or the other.

However, it would be pre-emptive to consider the petition before the response to the consultation has come out. We should write to the Scottish Government, notify it that we have received the petition and have decided to await the outcome of the consultation, and ask whether it would be so kind as to notify us of the outcome. At that point, if the committee so decides, we can pick up the petition and look at it further.

We should be aware that, if legislation is introduced as a result of the consultation, it will be subject to scrutiny by one of the Parliament’s other committees. I would be wary of the duplication of effort that would occur if we considered the petition while another committee was scrutinising legislation on the issue. We should write to the Scottish Government with the request that I mentioned. We can decide what to do with the petition when we receive the response to the consultation.

It seems to me that Mark McDonald has made a sensible suggestion that is in line with other members’ views. Is my understanding shared by other members of the committee?

I do not want to split the committee and lead us to a vote, although I am at liberty to do so. If Mark McDonald’s suggestion is the wish of the majority of the committee, I will happily go along with it.

The issue is undoubtedly extremely important. As members have said, the Scottish Government has held a comprehensive consultation—more than 50,000 people have responded to it. I stress that in no sense are we putting the petition on the back burner. It is important that we await proper feedback from the Scottish Government. Once we have that, we will be perfectly at liberty to reopen the discussion and consider any of the various options that are open to us. I make that clear; I would not want there to be any suggestion that we are in some sense shirking our responsibility.

We do not know what the Scottish Government will decide to do, if anything, so it would be appropriate to consider the petition at a later stage. We are not not considering it; it is just that the timing is not quite right. That is why I support what the convener has said.

It is within the committee’s power to take any action that we consider appropriate. We will keep the petition open and write to the Scottish Government to say that we have received it. We want to get feedback from the Scottish Government on what its next steps will be and the response to the consultation. As Mark McDonald said, there might be legislation, which will go to another committee.

That is a summary of members’ views. Do members agree that we should take that step?

Members indicated agreement.