Public Petitions Committee,

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Official Report 330KB pdf

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Scottish Parliament Public Petitions Committee Tuesday 27 May 2008

[The Convener opened the meeting at 14:00]

Good afternoon and welcome to the 10th meeting in 2008 of the Scottish Parliament's Public Petitions Committee. As always, I ask anyone who has an electronic device to switch it off in case it goes off during the meeting. We have received apologies from Rhoda Grant, who is looking after a relative.

I give a warm Scottish Parliament welcome to the president, members and officials of the equivalent petitions committee of the Parliament of Catalonia, who are with us today and tomorrow to examine how the public petitions system operates in Scotland and to consider whether there are any good lessons from Scotland that can be applied in Catalonia. We hope that today's discussion will interest our visitors and we look forward to having a more detailed discussion with them tomorrow morning.

We will begin with the continuation of our consideration of two petitions, on the publication of criminal memoirs and a ban on air-guns. We have with us the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill, to give oral evidence on the petitions. Welcome, Kenny. The other items on today's agenda are the consideration of 10 new and 10 current petitions, the committee's draft annual report on equalities and the annual report for the parliamentary year 2007-08.