Chamber and committees

Okay. I have one further comment. I noted what the minister said about her engagement thus far and during the summer recess, but I feel that it was significant that, after the committee’s evidence session last week, Victim Support Scotland tweeted to say:

“Rather than having a transformational impact on children’s experiences of the criminal justice system, the Bill as it currently stands could potentially fail both children who harm and children who have been harmed.”

I draw your attention to that tweet because it suggests that there is further work to be done to put Victim Support Scotland at ease.

To ask the Scottish Government how it monitors the overall effectiveness of financial memorandums. (S6O-02657)

Significant changes in projected spend, such as the 50 per cent uplift for the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill and the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, indicate too little up-front detailed policy analysis. The large ranges in estimates also indicate considerable uncertainty.

Speaking as a member of the Finance and Public Administration Committee, I am concerned about the general quality of the FMs that are being presented to us. In an extremely tight fiscal environment, that suggests the need for more rather than less up-front planning. Is it time to look again at the guidance that is being offered to ministers?

The independence of the inquiry is paramount. However, the need to gather accurate and reflective detail can lead to long timescales for any inquiry. Can the Deputy First Minister set any expectations as to timescales for the relatives who are desperate for answers?

I noted the minister’s point about finance. Will he share with me what activities he has been doing to ensure that the right finance with the right risk profile is available for small and medium-sized businesses, given that we want that breadth and diversity of providers?

Will the minister confirm the rumour that the next visit will be to Ferguslie Park?

The roll-out of universal free school meals for all pupils in primaries 1 to 5 and in additional support needs education settings has been startling. Will the cabinet secretary provide an update on the uptake of free school meals in general?

I would like to make a comment on post-legislative scrutiny. The Parliament is still struggling with that, for good reason, because of the complexity and the multiple variables whereby decisions are made about policies where there are reserved and devolved powers and so on. How much more deeply did the committee look at the type of post-legislative scrutiny that might be appropriate for a citizens assembly?

Will the member give way?

As members will know, I often refer to academic sources when researching for speeches. Thanks to Carnegie Europe, I now know the following:

“the principles of deliberation and sortition are not new. Rooted in ancient Athenian democracy, they were used throughout various points of history until around two to three centuries ago. Evoked by the Greek statesman Pericles in 431 BCE, the ideas”

are

“that ‘ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters’ and that instead of being a ‘stumbling block in the way of action ... [discussion] is an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all’”.

So this is not a new idea.

I read the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee’s report with great interest and, like others, I extend my congratulations to the authors, the participants, the participation and communities team, the advisers and the committee itself.

Since becoming an MSP, I have said that we need to make this place sing with a thousand different voices, both literally and metaphorically. As an aside, I note that the starting up of the Scottish Parliament choir, which will begin next Wednesday, 1 November at 1 pm in committee room 2—don’t miss it—will go some way towards that. Seriously, however, the extension to the involvement of the people who really count—our citizens—is extremely important. Let us hear them all sing.

I will comment on a few points that struck me. First, I propose to consider further the barriers to participative and deliberative democracy, rather than just the report’s recommendations and various themes. Three barriers resonated with me in particular: fear, representation and trust.

I believe that all of us here consistently underestimate people’s fear of speaking up in public. Despite our claiming, perhaps in a self-congratulatory way, that we are all Jock Tamson’s bairns, the fact is that, from the outside looking in, we are not. The way that we speak and our strange mannerisms and conventions appear inaccessible to many. Many of us here are well educated, but how often do we stop to consciously consider how our accents sound to ordinary Scots? I remember, just recently, being reminded by Darren McGarvey about his great work in the series “Class Wars” to drive our understanding of the impact of a working-class Glasgow accent.

Only the other day, I spoke to my colleague Emma Harper about what is, frankly, the bullying that she receives via social media for her sterling efforts to promote our Scots language. For women, who have been taught subliminally to take their place, often behind the men and after they have spoken, that must represent a particular challenge. I note that, even in this debate, only 16 per cent of the attendees are women.

The next barrier that struck me was representation. There is considerable complexity in getting together a group—any group—that can genuinely be a representative sample of our multicultural, multifaceted, urban and rural, Highland and lowland Scotland.

However, perhaps the most important barrier is that of trust, which is imperative if our politicians and our Parliament are to make people’s voices heard, yet it is lacking at the present time. There are 21 uses—