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Our next agenda item concerns a committee event. The clerks have circulated a paper that proposes a committee event that is aimed at promoting the public petitions system. The paper suggests holding such an event in Dundee on 14 June 2004.
It is fine. I have no problem in principle with the proposal, but I wonder about the timing: it strikes me that we are trying to spread over a full day what might be achieved in a morning or afternoon. For example, the paper proposes an hour for a speaker on the petitions system, but we will have given up the will to live at the end of that hour.
I spoke about the petitions system at a Hansard Society event a couple of weeks ago, and the clerk and I could have done with more time to go into all the issues. We had to cut the presentation short in the end. A few people in the audience who had been part of the consultative steering group had specific issues to raise.
We should accept the recommendation in the paper, because you and the clerk know what questions you have had from previous experience. We will leave it with you to proceed.
Linda Fabiani has had to leave, but she wanted to know about the possibility of expenses for participants who might find it difficult to attend but would have a contribution to make. The purpose of the event is to engage with the public and make ourselves available to groups that might otherwise not have access to the Parliament; expenses might be pertinent in that respect.
Witnesses should always receive expenses when coming to Scottish Parliament committees or, indeed, events such as the one we are talking about. There should be no question about it. That should certainly apply in this case if it does not apply to ordinary committee meetings.
The clerks and I wanted to focus on community groups and we chose Dundee because it has many active community groups that might want to participate. Perhaps Jim Johnston can let the committee know where we are up to.
The clerks and colleagues in participation services have already visited Dundee to liaise with local community groups. The idea is to focus on community groups in Dundee and in outlying areas.
I agree; that is really important. Groups representing ethnic minorities should be targeted, as well as those representing young people and schools, but not just those that are organised. I want us to get beyond people that are already organised, whether they are in community groups or trade unions. I support advertising the event in the local press. Having considered the practicalities, it would also be a good idea to have general advertisements in community centres and youth centres. We should use any way we can to target young people and get them involved, particularly in working class communities.
We should focus on the most disadvantaged areas throughout the central belt. The social inclusion partnerships finish today and there are target groups in every disadvantaged local authority area. Could the clerks give some particular regard to advertising the event in such areas? I am thinking of Dundee and the outlying areas in Tayside and Fife. The local policy planning team in Fife would be able to give us its top 10 or 20 most disadvantaged areas in Fife and I am sure that that could also be done for Tayside. Those are really the people who would benefit from being aware of the process.
Are members happy that we work on that basis? Obviously we will come back to the committee with more details at a later date.
I hear what Jim Johnston says about Dundee, but I would not want to think that people from other parts of Scotland who want to participate would be excluded. We could centre our pitch on Dundee but people should be encouraged to come from every part of Scotland.
The experience of the unit that supports this type of event is that if we hold it in Edinburgh, we will get a lot of Edinburgh-based groups with a few from elsewhere. The idea is to get the event to Dundee and hopefully groups from outwith Dundee will come. We think that we can get a good balance of community-based organisations that will want to participate in something like this if we went, as we do not often do, outside the central belt to other communities and hear what they have to say.
I would like it to be like a roadshow; we should not stop at Dundee.
No, we certainly want to make ourselves as accessible as we can. We are always looking for an opportunity to hold a committee meeting elsewhere. It might well be that we can pull together local issues that are pertinent to one area and find a venue where we could address all those issues at once. We always keep an eye on where the petitions are coming from.
Before we go into private session for items 5 and 6, I point out that Brian McConachie has been a committee assistant for the past six months and has been supporting the work of Jim Johnston and Joanne Clinton. He is going back to the chamber desk after this week, so I wanted to put on record our thanks for the work that Brian has done. He has been a big help to me and the clerks and his work has benefited the committee. I thank Brian for the work he has done and I hope that he enjoys going back to the chamber desk. [Laughter.] I do not know if your laughter will be on the record.
Meeting continued in private until 13:05.
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