Justice 1 Committee, 27 Feb 2001

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 27, 2001

Official Report 174KB pdf

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Petitions

We have four petitions before us today. The first, PE102, by James Ward, on sequestration, is one that we have already dealt with. Members have copies of the relevant papers and latest correspondence with the Minister for Justice on that petition. You will remember that we suggested that the minister should consider whether a petition for recall of a sequestration should be available in the sheriff court, rather than only in the Court of Session. To paraphrase the minister's response, he has agreed to look at that point.

Do members wish to suspend the committee's consideration of the petition pending the minister's consideration of that suggestion, or should we dispose of the petition and write to the minister saying that we strongly believe that petitions for recall should be available in the sheriff court?

I am prepared to wait and see what view the Executive reaches on the matter. Ministers may decide that that is the right thing to do, and we would all agree with that, but they may also decide that it is not. We could examine their reasons for not going down that path and the committee might disagree with them. However, it would be slightly intemperate of us to take a position before the Executive has at least considered the suggestion.

I shall write to the minister and ask him whether he has a time scale for coming to a conclusion on the matter.

I take it that we are agreed on the other matter that Mr Ward raised, about the ability to appeal. I think that we agreed that if the petition for recall is to be made available in the sheriff court, that is not something that we want to pursue any further.

We heard evidence that appeal was not as good a method because both sides have to be taken into account. I was convinced by the argument that recall was the better option.

The second petition, PE205, by Mr and Mrs Collie, has been referred to us by the Public Petitions Committee for information only, and we are therefore not obliged to do anything with it. Nevertheless, I suggest that we take it into consideration to a certain extent when we are looking at the Convention Rights (Compliance) (Scotland) Bill later today. Phil Gallie has suggested that we write to Mr Collie congratulating him on his efforts to highlight the situation and on his determination to pursue family interests within the civil law. I have to say that I feel that that is beyond the scope of what we should be doing in response to a petition that has been passed to us for information.

I agree, but I think that the issues raised in the petition are pretty similar to those that we will be dealing with when we go into private session. I wonder whether we should tell the Public Petitions Committee that we are dealing with the issues in petition PE205 in our report on the Convention Rights (Compliance) (Scotland) Bill. We should perhaps write to that committee saying that, although it has sent us that petition, pretty much all the issues it raises are dealt with in our stage 1 report. The Public Petitions Committee could then pass that information on to the petitioners.

We can certainly bring that to the attention of the Public Petitions Committee.

The final petitions are PE299 and PE331, by Mrs Tricia Donegan. We have already considered a previous petition by that lady. We agreed to suspend consideration of the previous petition pending an investigation by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. We are still awaiting that report, which is due to be published in the next couple of months. I suggest that we also defer consideration of the two new petitions from Mrs Donegan until that evidence is available. Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Meeting adjourned until 11:45 and continued in private thereafter until 12:32.