Public Petitions Committee, 31 Aug 1999

Meeting date: Tuesday, August 31, 1999

Official Report 163KB pdf

---

COSLA Meeting

The next item is a report by the convener on the meeting with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. It was an informal meeting that Helen and I managed to go to. The president of COSLA has tried to arrange to meet the convener of every committee in the Scottish Parliament.

The purpose of the meetings is to stress that COSLA wants to co-operate closely with the committees in the Parliament and to use the committees to the best possible effect and to discover how local authorities can present petitions to the Scottish Parliament. I felt that it was a useful meeting; in fact, at the end of it the COSLA representatives said that they had probably learnt more from us than we had learnt from them. They thought that they should perhaps be examining the way in which local government deals with petitions—because it is not all that it is cracked up to be—and that they could learn from the practice of the Scottish Parliament.

It is encouraging to discover that we might be able to influence not only how the Parliament operates but how other democratic institutions in Scotland operate. If we set a good precedent, others may follow our example. The work of the committee is, in that sense, very important and essential to the principles of openness and accountability that we talk about but that never seem to exist in the real world. We have a chance to make them real. I was encouraged by the meeting with COSLA; do you want to say anything, Helen?

You are absolutely right, John. The general impression was that COSLA wanted to have a continuing liaison with us and that that is important for all the committees. There has always been a fear that we will try to take over the role of local government and that it will lose power. It was important to get across the idea about working in a real partnership; that sends out the right message. It was a welcome meeting.

Has anyone got any points that they wish to make?

I hope that our consideration of a form to assist people with petitions will be part of a wider education—and not just of COSLA, but of the Scottish public in schools and elsewhere. There should be an understanding of how this committee can best work for the Scottish people. I am talking about the younger generation and an education programme.

We have already discussed this. As soon as we agree the public guidance on petitions, we will return to the idea of a press launch of the committee to draw the attention of the public in Scotland to the committee's usefulness. We have had only eight petitions, mainly because people do not know that we are here. I hope that, once we have held the press conference, the Parliament will receive a lot more petitions.

Since we were elected, all of us have received an avalanche of representations from a variety of organisations. In particular, since the committees have been set up, specific representations have been made to us. However, none of the mail I have received has been from someone saying that they would like to talk to me further about public petitions. Christine is right—there is an issue here.

Over the summer, I met the Forestry Commission and others about the remit of the Transport and the Environment Committee, but no one asked me what public petitions can do; no one knows.

I hope that I am not responsible for an avalanche of public petitions, because at meetings that I have attended at which people have made known their concerns, I have told them that they can put in a petition. I have given them the address and the names of the clerks and so on, so the committee may receive quite a few from Glasgow.

Before we have the launch, it is important that we make people aware of the fact that the committee is here and that it is easy to get in touch with the clerk, who will help them fill in the form. I hope that it will work.

Perhaps the headlines in tomorrow's press will be "MSPs looking for work".

We have plenty of that.

We can pass it on to the Transport and the Environment Committee.

Under "Any other business", there are details of the schedule of committee meetings. The next meeting is on 21 September in committee room 3 or 4. Are members content with the meetings as set out in the schedule, or do they think that we should be meeting more often?

I have observed that when the Parliament began, many people expressed the view that it should not meet only in Edinburgh. I note that all the meetings of this committee, and of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, are in Edinburgh. There are perhaps good reasons for having meetings in the mornings, afternoons and at lunchtime while we are here, but we should recognise that if we want to take the committees around Scotland we will sometimes have to suffer some inconvenience. I suspect that the Public Petitions Committee will not always set the heather alight, but there might be contentious issues in future that are of particular local interest. It might be that on some occasions we should hold options open on venues.

At the first meeting I asked whether there would be an opportunity to get around the country and, tongue-in-cheek, mentioned the fact that if people are coming through to Edinburgh it might cost them more money because of the toll tax. I was assured that we would consider the matter. It is expensive for people who have been invited to speak to the committee to travel here if they are coming from up north or wherever. Travelling around the country would be an example of the openness of the Parliament. I know that the budget is small, but the Public Petitions Committee is probably one of the committees that could travel. We do not have an abundance of clerks and so on, and we do not have to have access—as the Justice and Home Affairs Committee does—to books and to other committees.

This committee could be the first one to go around the country; perhaps not every month, but at least quarterly, when people who wish to speak cannot manage to come down to Edinburgh. I wondered whether we could consider that issue and the budget. The convener mentioned finding out how much money there is for travel, but it would be less costly to go to the other side of the country than for everyone to come to Edinburgh.

I do not think that I am giving any state secrets away by saying that the same opinions were expressed at the conveners group. Committee conveners want us to get out and about and to get closer to people, particularly if we are debating issues that are of particular relevance and interest in a specific area. The backdrop to this is the fact that all of us want the Parliament to be as open and accessible as possible. We were concerned at some of the constraints that might be put upon that. Obviously, there are budgetary constraints and some practical restraints that we perhaps do not think about when we say that it would be great to go here or there.

This is an issue to which the conveners committee will return; we may have to find ways around it that mean that we do not have full committees moving around the country. We can be quorate at a smaller number and we can find ways of taking information from people around the country that might not involve full committees. There seems to be a need for official reporters and so on. This is an area of great concern, certainly to me as a convener, and it was generally felt by all the conveners that it was an issue that MSPs took seriously.

Picking up on Phil's point, I do not think that we should be taking the committee outside Edinburgh every month, but three or four times a year would not be excessive. In the life of a big subject committee there will always be occasions when people across Scotland are going to want to come along and have their say and listen to what is going on. MSPs should not be sitting in Edinburgh all the time.

We do not; we go back to our constituencies and people see us there. I am in favour of having more contact with the public—this is one of the committees in which we can do that—but I am not in favour of a carte blanche to move the committee around the country; it should be appropriate and there should be a good reason for it.

I support Margaret's point that there might be ways around the problem. For example, if we are seeking information, and it is easier for us to go to an area, two of us might agree to do that. I am not sticking rigidly to the idea that there must always be a full committee meeting or that the meeting must always be here, but I am not happy for it to be minuted that the unanimous decision of the committee is that we move around the country just for the sake of it.

I strongly support what Pauline says, and re-emphasise that I am not against going around the country meeting people. According to some papers, such as yesterday's Daily Record, I am supposed to have had 17 weeks' holiday this year. I have probably had only seven days' holiday over the recess, so I take great exception to the Daily Record headlines.

When I was at the new, reorganised Fife Council, we took our committees around Fife, which is a big area. The members who were most enthusiastic at the beginning were the people who went on to say, "Wait a minute—this is not working." One reason it did not work was that not all the rooms available for meetings had intercom and sound systems. Right across the area, people had access problems with where the meetings were held. There were problems organising the committee clerks to be in the same place at the same time in such a large geographic area. When we arrived at the destination, we sometimes found that critical information had been left back at base.

The process cost a phenomenal amount of money. We were up against hard, stark choices. We could have been of benefit to voluntary groups, who were able to see from the budget at the end of the financial year that we had chosen to go out and about when they were having their budgets cut by similar amounts of money.

Pauline is right: we should look at the specifics. If there are specific reasons that are good and justifiable, we should meet elsewhere, but we should remember—as Pauline rightly points out—that if we are invited we can go out individually to meet people and see for ourselves specific aspects of concern for our constituents that are within our committee remits.

We need to take the responsibility seriously, so I am four-square behind what Pauline says. Let us push for committee meetings in other parts of the country when there is a crying need for it, but let us not do it just for the sake of it, which would—quite rightly—raise a lot of questions.

I agree. Because of the cost implications for the administration of the Parliament there has to be substance behind taking the committee out of Edinburgh; it should not be a public relations exercise.

Some of the other committees, such as the Justice and Home Affairs Committee and the Transport and the Environment Committee, have a wider remit and a lot of clerks, so they might not take their meetings around the country. This committee deals with the public. People will take enough interest to get a petition together and will be interested enough to write in. It is paramount that we get out to see the people. Edinburgh is not the be-all and end-all.

The problem with Westminster was that it was too remote. We thought that the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh would be much more accessible. It may be accessible from the central belt, but it is not accessible from further-flung areas. This committee should set a precedent by going out, perhaps quarterly. It is paramount that we are seen to be meeting the public. We are not going to say, "We are having a meeting here; send public petitions here"—that would be silly.

If certain issues come up in areas from which people cannot travel, we should be duty bound to go and hear the petitioners, particularly when we are saying that they may be able to speak to the committee. It would be only quarterly or twice a year, depending on what came in, but we should not be static. We belittle petitioners if we say that we will move about and then send two members of the committee. That is not what the petitioner put the petition in for; they put it in to hear it properly presented in front of the whole committee. We should carefully consider moving about to different areas.

Helen's comments about the Daily Record were absolutely right. We may now get more holiday because of Jack McConnell, who is telling us that we will get 30 days. That is very nice of him, but I would have been lucky to get a fortnight's holiday during the recess. Most of us, regardless of our party—I say this for the press—are very hard-working constituency MSPs. We did get out there and work. Perhaps it could be pointed out to Jack McConnell that we did not get even 30 days' holiday.

It is not for this committee to debate holidays for MSPs, but it is open to petitioning by them.

I am sure that there would be 129 signatures on that petition.

This debate is spiralling away without information being put before the committee. The issue of committees travelling has been raised at the conveners liaison committee. We must accept that there are severe budgetary restraints. There are 16 committees in the Scottish Parliament. If the others and this committee—as Sandra White is suggesting—go out three of four times a year we are talking about 48 to 64 journeys by committees around Scotland. The budget will not support anything like that.

I am saying that we should set a precedent, John.

The problem is that if any visit by this committee to any part of the country is to be an official meeting of the committee, the clerks, the official reporters and other officers must be there before the meeting can be regarded as official, and that must be funded. If we go out we are going to have to be choosy because there will not be money to do otherwise. We must choose the instances in which we think going elsewhere would be justified.

We could also consider that the full committee need not attend. The costs of transporting all seven members of the committee to somewhere else in Scotland would be quite high.

A possible compromise could be to delegate the authority of the committee to the convener and a deputy.

Only three members of this committee are required for a quorum, so three members could hold an official meeting.

I know that this might be hard, but would it be possible for us to hear a figure for that budget?

There is a figure, but we are not allowed to say what it is.

Why not? I thought that this was an open Parliament. I want to know what the figure is.

It is still under discussion by the conveners liaison committee.

Is it under negotiation?

It is under negotiation by the liaison committee. The conveners are aware of the problem and are trying to find a way around it that will allow committees to travel about, but there are severe budgetary restraints on all the committees. I hope that there will be a report back from the next conveners liaison committee meeting.

I would like to go back to the point that I made at the start of this debate—that the committee should have meetings outside Edinburgh only on selected issues. I accept that, but I would like to query the convener's point about budgets. We are all paid expenses to come to Edinburgh, so what would be the difference between that and paying our expenses to go Glasgow, Stirling or Perth? Would it be a great difference? If the convener is going to quote budgets, he must give me a bit more in the way of information on the costs of us all appearing here in Edinburgh.

I am not ruling out the committee's meeting elsewhere; I am simply pointing out that there are budgetary restraints on all the committees. The matter is being debated actively by the liaison committee. Ways around the budgetary restraints are being sought. If a committee meeting in Glasgow, Dundee or Aberdeen, instead of Edinburgh, is practicable and affordable, we will, of course, do that, but if we go out of Edinburgh there will be additional costs because we must take staff. Other kinds of expenses also come into this and we must take them on board.

If members are worried about headlines in the Daily Record, one they should not want to see—but in which I am sure the Daily Record would indulge itself—would be about them jaunting all over Scotland at taxpayers' expense. The subject is being actively discussed and I will report progress at the next meeting of the conveners group. We will have a better idea then.

There is no opposition in principle to committees meeting outside Edinburgh. We want to do that as much as we can, but we cannot say on the record that we will go out four times a year. We cannot set arbitrary standards like that. Let us wait and see what money is available and what we can do.

When will you be reporting back?

I think that the next meeting of conveners is on 7 September, so I will report back at the next meeting of this committee.

I accept what you have said, but could the clerk provide us with the comparative costs of holding a meeting here in Edinburgh and in one of the public buildings in Glasgow? That would give us a fair idea of what costs we are talking about.

I do not think that Phil is taking into account the real implications. Glasgow, Stirling, Perth and Dundee are not such a big problem as regards moving around.

I accept that.

Stranraer, Wick and Thurso are just as entitled to have the committee meet there if there is a requirement to go and visit. There is not just an implication for costs—there is the issue of practicalities. We have a committee work load, perhaps 14 constituency surgeries to attend and all our case work. There is a cost to that in terms of the choices that we must make. We are not attending to our constituency requirements during the time that we spend travelling.

That is one reason why I wanted to have a meeting in Glasgow, Helen.

I would take great exception to this becoming a central belt committee that gravitated between Glasgow and Edinburgh. We must think about the whole of Scotland. This is not Glasgow's or Edinburgh's Parliament; it is Scotland's Parliament. There are restraints and we can achieve nothing more by discussing the subject further this morning. We must see the budget, see how other committees are accessing that budget and then see what is possible. I will report back on the state of play from the next meeting of the conveners. We can give the subject further consideration then.

Does the committee agree to the schedule of meetings that has been set out? It does.