Local Government Committee, 28 Mar 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 28, 2000

Official Report 159KB pdf

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Petition PE26

At our meeting of 15 February we agreed that we would write to the City of Edinburgh Council, Dumfries and Galloway Council, Highland Council and Stirling Council to ask for information on how they deal with petitions. The councils' replies have been distributed to members.

The number of petitions that those councils receive seems relatively small. Petitions are subject to a scrutiny process in each council, although those processes are slightly different. Members of the public can express their views to councils in other ways, including through deputations or delegations to the councils and by turning up at committee meetings. All four responses seem to back COSLA's opinion that it should be up to each council to decide how it deals with petitions. That would certainly be my position, but I open that up to comments from the committee.

We support subsidiarity.

Strange as that may seem.

So, we all agree with subsidiarity and with what COSLA is saying. The councils approached this in different ways, but it seems eminently sensible that each council should be allowed to process petitions in its own way.

If some organisation wrote to us saying, "We sent a petition from our village to council X, which just put it in the bin", I presume that we could invite that council to pay some attention to it.

To take it out of the bin?

Yes. However, as long as councils have decent systems, it does not matter whether they have different systems.

Yes. There is the Public Petitions Committee, of course.

This matter would not have arisen but for the fact that somebody felt dissatisfied with the situation. The least courtesy that any council can extend to its people is to acknowledge petitions and say which bit of the system they go through, even if the petitioner does not get the outcome that they desire. That courtesy seems to be what is lacking.

The main issue is not the petition, but access to the council for individuals or groups. The responses tell us that a system is in place in local government, which satisfies me.

We must guard against a campaign of petitions. There should be no automatic response to people who run a campaign of petitions on one matter, which would tie everybody up. Responsible actions on the part of the public, as well as on the part of councils, must be expected.

I agree. Councillors are pretty open about the way in which they do things; there is no particular problem in Scotland regarding the openness of meetings and the publication of minutes. The public can track what is happening to a petition in which they are interested. I am not aware of poor performances by councillors on this; most match the responses that we have received. If the public feel that a petition has been binned, they have the right to adjust things at the next election—that cuts across all councils. I would be more concerned about what would happen to a petition that is sent to a local enterprise company or to a health board—on hospital closures, for example. That might be a more relevant avenue of investigation, although it is linked to the previous agenda item.

We will write to the petitioner who wrote to us, advising him of the action that we have taken—that we have asked other councils and have found the systems satisfactory. However, the issue was not the petition, but the way in which it was dealt with.