Rural Affairs and Environment Committee, 28 Jan 2009

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Official Report 242KB pdf

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Petitions

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Coastal and Marine National Park Process (PE1047)<br />Maritime Organisations (PE1081)

Item 6 is consideration of petitions. PE1047 was brought by Mark Carter on behalf of the Hebridean Partnership. PE1081, which was brought by Ronald Guild, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to seek a UK-wide reappraisal of all Government, local authority and non-governmental organisation maritime and maritime airspace responsibilities, and organisations. Both petitions relate to marine issues.

The clerks have circulated background paper RAE/S3/09/3/15. The petitions were referred to the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee with a suggestion that we might consider them as part of scrutiny of the forthcoming marine bill—that would have occurred to me without anyone else urging me to do so. It is proposed that we treat the petitions as we would written evidence on the bill at stage 1 and write to the petitioners to ask them to submit further written evidence in response to the specific provisions of the bill when it is introduced. Indeed, Mark Carter has provided a supplementary submission, which was supplied to members this morning. In general, do members agree to the recommended course of action?

Mark Carter has drawn on his experience of what happened during the discussions about the establishment of a coastal and marine national park. The debate was characterised by early polarisation of positions, rather as happened when land-based national parks were being considered 20 or 25 years ago. In preparation for the evidence that we will eventually take, can we invite Scottish Natural Heritage and the minister to give thought to how the consultation process might have led to polarised positions being taken early in the process, so that we will have a better feel for what has happened when we come to scrutinise the bill?

When we put out our call for written evidence we might ask for some of that information.

Do members agree to take the recommended course of action?

Members indicated agreement.

The committee is agreeing to close formal consideration of the petitions on the basis that we have agreed. Of course, we will treat the petitions as written evidence in respect of the bill.

If the petitions address issues that go beyond the bill, can we go back to them at the end of the process? I suppose that that is a procedural issue.

If you close the petitions they will not formally be part of the process, but there is nothing to stop the clerks getting in touch with the petitioners to keep them informed of matters.

I am not sure that that answered my question.

We either deal with the petitions as part of the marine bill or we do not. If we deal with the petitions as part of our consideration of the marine bill, the process requires us to close consideration of them today. When the bill has been dealt with, it will be for the petitioners to come back to us. They will have to re-petition on the basis of any outstanding issues. There is nothing to stop people coming back to us on outstanding issues.

Do members agree to take that course of action?

Members indicated agreement.

Meeting continued in private until 12:38.